From: Eugene Harasymiw
To: [email protected]
Subject: "Pursuit of suspected war criminals too slow, critics say"
Date: August 1, 1999 8:32 PM

The Editor of National Post:

Despite an honest effort, Rick Mofina's article (July 29, 1999) is riddled with misinformation.

If Immigration Minister Lucienne Robillard is correctly quoted as having said her government is determined "to take action against individuals living in Canada who are guilty of heinous acts committed during the Second World War," then why is her government putting these people through a civil process? Bottom line -- a person cannot possibly be guilty of any criminal offence unless subjected to a criminal trial process.

Secondly, there is no insight given into why investigations into World War II war criminals didn't start sooner. The answer is because everybody involved knows you could never win a prosecution against a suspect using the criminal process, for the simple reason that there is no probative evidence of war crimes in any of these cases, and never has been.

Thirdly, why not explore Prof. Abella's remarks? Who are "the world's most heinous murderers of all time?" Is there any reason for him to have picked out only one select group of victims? What "objections" is he referring to? Would they perhaps be legitimate ones? And what does the good professor mean by "cost"? Perhaps he's referring to the suspension of the accused's civil liberties and the steady erosion of due process and the rule of law that the government's denaturalization and deportation policy has engendered.

As for the Deschenes Commission part, as recently as November, 1998, Justice Deschenes made it clear publicly that he would not have recommended in 1986 denaturalization and deportation, having since then observed its crude, invidious and destructive results.

Eugene Harasymiw
President
Alberta Ukrainian Self-Reliance League
fax (780) 457-5170