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Editor's note: The
January 18, 1997
An $8 Million investigation
into an alleged Nazi war crime collapsed yesterday when an Old Bailey jury
decided that an 86-year-old former carpenter was unfit to plead to charges of
murdering three Jews 55 years ago. The attempt to prosecute Szymon Serafinowicz
was stopped without the case coming to trial because the jury accepted that he
was suffering from dementia.
The defense had said that,
as a result of the dementia, believed to be caused by Alzheimer's disease, he
would be unable to follow the case or defend himself adequately. Serafinowicz,
of Banstead,
Nicholas Bowers, his
attorney, said after the jury's decision: "I think he is relieved, but it
is difficult to know how much of the last eight days he understood. My client's
health has deteriorated rapidly in recent years, especially in the last three
and a half years during which he has suffered the death of his wife and then
the incredible pressure of these proceedings.
"It would have been
impossible and unrealistic for him to endure the strain of a lengthy and
difficult trial. However, he regrets he will not have the chance to clear his
name."
But the collapse of the
case vindicated statesmen who opposed the 1991
War Crimes Act, which proved the catalyst for a series of investigations by
the police and the Crown Prosecution Service costing
up to $28 million.
Lord Gilmour of
Craigmillar, a former Cabinet minister, said: "This is what we said would
happen when we opposed the Bill. "We said that people would be too old and
it would be quite impossible to produce a case. It has been a grotesque waste
of money."
Lord Tebbit, another of the
Bill's opponents, said: "I never believed that anybody after all these
years would be found fit for trial, would be found guilty and then be found fit
to serve a prison sentence. That was obvious years ago."
The Crown Prosecution
Service said that five other potential cases would continue to be considered on
their merits. The Metropolitan police is examining a a further seven. The Crown
had brought witnesses from around the world to testify to the atrocities during
committal proceedings last year. They were due to return to repeat their
accounts if the case had gone to trial.
Serafinowicz's son, Peter,
a 53-year-old scaffolder from
A further seven alleged war
criminals are being investigated by a specialist Scotland Yard unit.
Though the unit's work was
said to have been wound down in 1995, six policemen and four civilians are
still trying to piece together new cases.
Five cases are also being
considered by the Crown Prosecution Service. Among them is thought to be a
suspected former SS guard allegedly linked to the deaths of two prisoners at
Mauthausen concentration camp in
Since its inception in
1991, the unit has travelled to more than a dozen countries to investigate 375
cases. Officers found insufficient evidence in 368.
The collapse of the Crown's
case against Serafinowicz may spell the end of what has been a long,
fiercely-contested battle to bring alleged war criminals living in
The origins of the
legislation can be traced to October 1986 when the
Douglas Hurd, then Home
Secretary, concluded that 10 of Wiesenthal's 17 names and seven on the Soviet
list might be living in
But because the offences
were not committed in
The collapse of the
Serafinowicz prosecution means the Scottish court hearing involving Anton
Gecas, a retired Lithuanian mining engineer, remains the closest
Last year Lord Rodger of
Earlsferry, then Lord Advocate, said that a three-year inquiry had not produced
enough evidence to prosecute Gecas and 16 other alleged criminals in
It was a decision that
deeply dismayed supporters of war crimes trials because many saw the Gecas case
as the strongest compiled so far by researchers around the world. Once it was
abandoned, the impetus drained from the Scottish initiative. Many will now be
watching to see if the English initiative goes the same way.
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Michael A. Hoffman II's
comment: Here are octogenarians being dragged into court on charges of killing
two or three Jewish civilians. These are of course crimes but what of the
thousands of Zionists residing in Britain who slaughtered hundreds and even
thousands of Palesatinians and Lebanese in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon (under
Begin), during Operation Iron Fist (under Rabin) and in last year's Operation
Grapes of Wrath (under Peres)?
What of the tens of
thousands of Communist war criminals still living who slaughtered Christians?
Why no hunt for them?
Members of both groups of
suspects--Israeli and Communist-- are living in
The war crimes
charade is an abject lesson in Zionist power and vengeance. They must have their pound of flesh
from old men and it must be anti-Communists and Christians who are made to bear
the exclusive opprobrium of "war criminal."
This is the psychological
warfare of the Wiesenthal Institute at work. No Jew must ever be prosecuted for
a war crime. The Mark of Cain is to be affixed upon the opponents of the Jews
alone.
It's clever. But this time
an English jury saw through it. God grant that the tide will continue to turn
against Jewish psychological warfare dressed in human rights attire.
--Michael A. Hoffman II
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