Ukrainian News | Feb. 16 - Mar. 01, 2005 | Orest Rudzik
Letter to Editor

I was interested to read your front page story on Wasyl Odynsky in your issue of January 19 - February 01, 2005.

Nestor Woychyshyn and I are co-counsel for a similar case, representing Vladimir Katriuk, who is a resident of Quebec in a little town called Ormston on the Vermont border.

Because the initial proceeding was brought in the Federal Court, Nestor and I, despite our being Ontario residents and members of the Bar of the Law Society of Upper Canada, were permitted to represent Mr. Katriuk in the Federal Court in Montreal, where the initial hearing, by way of a so-called fact finding expedition was brought.

The situation with Vladimir Katriuk has a very lively surreal character insofar as the accusations against Vladimir Katriuk sourced from his having been in the police militia in Belarus in 1941.

After the Eastern Front collapsed, the Germans transported his group of Ukrainians to France. On realizing that they were no longer surrounded by Soviets and a bewildering variety of partisans, the whole group defected and joined the FFI [French Foreign Legion]. Mr. Katriuk himself was seriously wounded at Colmar, and spent a considerable period of time in an American hospital and on emerging was awarded a French medal of merit and a French war pension.

However, in Canada, he is hounded for being a Nazi and, indeed, the decision in his case was long delayed because of an intervention on the part of a spokesperson for an NGO of Jewish synagogues in Montreal who alleged that the presiding Justice, Marc Nadon, who was sitting as a Commissioner in the hearing, was biased. The accusation was somewhat similar to the one now being launched against Mr. Justice Gomery and was intended to have the same effect.

In our case, it seems to have done so since Mr. Justice Nadon, after taking strips of the Crown for not bringing any evidence to the Court that Vladimir Katriuk was in any way directly implicated in the string of atrocities that were presented to the Court by way of historical experts, nevertheless managed to find that there was a falsification of entry.

We have since tried to exercise some rights of appeal, both in the Federal Court of Appeal and for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, but have been non-suited because of the way the legislation is worded, to prevent any appeal arising, purportedly because, at first instance, the hearing is only for purposes of fact finding.

We find ourselves in a situation very similar to that of Mr. Odynsky since a letter was issued on December 23, 2004, with the usual exquisite timing of the War Crimes Secretariat of the Department of Justice, indicating that the then Immigration Minister, Ms. Judy Sgro, would be exercising her intention to recommend revocation of citizenship.

As you are well aware, there has been all kinds of goings on at the Ministry and we have since written to the Honourable Joe Volpe asking him to reconsider and to keep us briefed on what steps he might himself be taking. We feel that to preserve at least a patina of respectability, Volpe will have to review the report that was intended to be presented by his predecessor.

The circumstances of Mr. Katriuk's case, as I have tried to indicate above, are very strongly bizarre, at least in a sense that France holds him out to be a war hero and the Canadians seem to be determined to try to destroy him.

Orest H.T. Rudzik, Mississauga