Ukrainian Canadians voice objections to possible hiring of former OSI director (11/30/97)

Ukrainian Canadians voice objections to possible hiring of former OSI director

Ukrainian News

EDMONTON - Canada's Ukrainian community wants assurances that the Department of Justice will not hire Neal Sher, former director of the U.S. Office of Special Investigations (OCI), for its war crimes unit, Justice Minister Anne McLellan was told during a meeting with Ukrainian community representatives in Edmonton on November 13.

Eugene Harasymiw, a lawyer and president of the Alberta Ukrainian Self-Reliance League, the lay organization of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada, said that reports of Mr. Sher's possible hiring first surfaced in August.

He said that in an earlier letter to the minister he "voiced the strongest possible objection to the hiring of Neal Sher, or anyone else associated with the OSI."

Mr. Harasymiw based his objections on the record of the OSI and its method of operation. He said the OSI knowingly used forged documents, misrepresented witnesses, pressured the accused and their families to accept guilty pleas, and withheld evidence from the defendants that could be used to prove their innocence.

He read from the 1993 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on the John Demjanjuk case, which reversed the earlier judgement under which Mr. Demjanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship "on the grounds that the judgements were wrongly procured as a result of prosecutorial misconduct that constituted fraud on the court."

Mr. Sher served as director of the OSI, the U.S. Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit, from 1983 to 1994. Mr. Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel in 1986, but was acquitted by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993.

"Mr. Sher is not fit to work within the Canadian justice system, period," Mr. Harasymiw said.

Mr. Harasymiw also said the Ukrainian community finds it "extremely upsetting" that the government is using immigration hearings as a means of dealing with alleged war criminals. Many people lied about their past upon entering Canada after World War II because under the Yalta Agreement people who lived in the pre-war boundaries of the Soviet Union were to be deported back to that country, which meant almost certain death or exile to Siberia.

He said war criminals should be tried in Canada under Canadian law - not deported to a third country for trial.

Minister McLellan agreed to accept any information regarding Mr. Sher that the Ukrainian community can bring forward, but was adamant that people who misrepresented their situation upon entering Canada were "guilty of a very serious breach of Canadian law." She explained, "For me it is the issue of defending the integrity of Canadian citizenship."

However, she added that the government is considering amendments to the Criminal Code which would allow for the prosecution of alleged war criminals in Canada.

Mr. Harasymiw also suggested that government resources used to hunt war criminals could be better utilized educating people about World War II.

Taras Podilsky, president of the Edmonton Branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said the Ukrainian community is for the prosecution of all war criminals - not just Nazi war criminals - providing there is evidence to back up allegations and that they are tried under Canadian criminal law.

Minister McLellan agreed and said the government is moving towards more prosecution of "modern" as opposed to "historic" war criminals, and said her department would be willing to look at any evidence the Ukrainian community can provide about Soviet war criminals in Canada.

Mr. Podilsky also voiced the UCCLA's objections to the charitable tax status of the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, based in Toronto, noting that the UCCLA does not have such status, nor does it desire a charitable tax number.

He produced a copy of a recent fund-raising letter sent out by the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center soliciting contributions "to help us pressure world leaders, ... step up our approaches to the media, ... convince Canadian officials at the highest levels ... to take immediate action against these war criminals (veterans of the 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army, also known as the 14th Waffen-SS Division) living on Canadian soil."

Mr. Podilsky said such literature could be construed as defamatory to Ukrainians and thus fall under the classification of hate literature.

Ukrainian News Editor Marco Levytsky said the media often runs slanted stories that are used in order to exert pressure upon Canadian officials.

He cited as an example a recent story in which Sol Littman, the Canadian representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center claimed that 2,000 war criminals (again veterans of the 1st Division, originally known as the Galicia Division) had found a haven in Alberta.

Mr. Levytsky said the division was a military unit formed in order to create the nucleus of a future Ukrainian army in case both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union collapsed after the war - as did both the German and Russian empires following World War I. The division fought only against the Soviet Union, surrendered to the Western allies and did not participate in any war crimes.

He noted that the division was cleared of any war crimes by Canadian officials not once, but twice: in 1950 when they were first allowed to come to Canada, and again in 1986 by the Deschenes Commission on war crimes.

Mr. Levytsky added that the majority of division members settled in Ontario, not Alberta, explaining that this was just another example of how Mr. Littman had twisted the facts in order to get media coverage.

He compared Mr. Littman to U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy, who in the 1950s led an anti-Communist witch hunt. "Like McCarthy he manipulates the media, and like McCarthy he has found himself a convenient scapegoat, in this case - Ukrainians," he said.

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