The decisions in both the Josef Forman and Jura Skomatchuk citizenship cases are "outrageous", says the lawyer who represented both men at their hearings.

"I explain it the same way as I explain the others," said Eric Hafemann referring to the two latest citizenship revocation hearings called under the government's Denaturalization and Deportation policy launched in 1995, on the claim that it was designed to bring "Nazi war criminals" to justice.

"There seems to be an agenda in the federal court," he added.

"These two decision are even more outrageous and I have no hesitation in saying that there appears to be bias on the face of the record," Hafemann told Ukrainian News.

Justice Judith Snider on Aug. 17, 2006 ruled in two separate, but almost identical reports that both Furman and Skomatchuk hid their membership in the Trawniki concentration guard units during World War II, when they came to Canada in 1949 and 1952 respectively.

Skomatchuk is now 85, while the 87-year-old Furman suffers from dementia and currently resides in Edmonton in a long-term care facility.

Both are ethnic Ukrainians.

In the Furman case, she rejected an original statutory document confirmed as authentic by a government witness and an employment history which stated Furman worked from 1942 to 1945 on the farm of a man called Schumacher in Eltheim, Germany after being transported from a prisoner of war camp for captured Soviet troops, as "fraudulent".

Instead she accepted photocopies of original documents being held in the Central Archives of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation, in Moscow, which stated that a man called Josef Furmantschuk (among two other spellings) served as a guard at the Trawniki camp in Poland as more credible "on a balance of probabilities."

"In my view, it is more probable than not that the statutory declaration and the employment history were fabricated to provide Mr. Furman with a wartime background as a farm worker," Justice Snider stated.

"The Judge rejected these documents. There is no legal basis for doing so. None. Absolutely none," said Hafemann. "There wasn't one shred of evidence to suggest that they were phony, they were false, they were fabricated. That is a speculation on her part not justified in law,"

Hafemann added that the judge completely ignored another document known as a de-Nazification document which was a report of Furman's investigation by allied authorities.

"What is critical is that he would have had to have been in Germany for quite some time to even have been investigated. Anybody who arrived in Germany at the end of the war would not have been subject to that type of investigation. That would mean just as his documents say that he was taken as a Russian prisoner of war transported to Germany to provide slave labour essentially."

"Mr. Furman, of course, given his illness (dementia), was not able to assist, but the documents are straightforward, they are incontrovertible as far as I am concerned and those documents, juxtaposed to what the government presented -- photocopies of lists with names on them and a historian who tried to tell us what this mean and had to admit he had no personal knowledge how people got on the lists," he added.

Asked whether this would have made the ruling subject to appeal had it been held in a criminal court, Hafemann replied:

"Oh absolutely. If this were a criminal case those lists would have never been entered. You see those lists are hearsay and therefore not admissible"

In the Skomatchuk case, RCMP Officer Mitchell G. Owens, who interviewed immigrants going through Liverpool in 1952 and appeared as a government witness, stated he would have let someone with Skomatchuk's background through even if he had been a Trawniki guard.

"It appears that, in spite of policy directives that might have said otherwise, he was sensitive to possible mitigating circumstances created by the upheaval and difficult political situation placed upon individuals during the wartime. For example, he had some sympathy for the lowest level of guard or for someone who had not served voluntarily. Mr. Owens stated that he would not be especially concerned about a young, poorly educated person who might have worked in the Soviet Army or German labour forces. However, an older individual who had a direct connection to a concentration camp would be a much greater concern," reads the ruling.

But Justice Snider nevertheless recommended revocation because Skomatchuk said he worked in the farms and trenches between 1943 and 1945.

"In not admitting that he was a concentration camp guard during the war, Mr. Skomatchuk effectively foreclosed any questioning by the RCMP Officer regarding the particulars of that background," she stated.

Hafemann told Ukrainian News he also argued that the proceedings in both cases should not have been brought forward because of the May 31, 2005 Federal Court of Appeals ruling that the government has to adhere to its own guideline of providing evidence of individual crimes in cases brought forward under the 1995 D & D war crimes policy.

In neither case was either man charged with any individual crime.

But the judge said her job was to write a report for the minister of citizenship, who could then decide what to do with it.

In the federal Court of Appeal ruling which reinstated the citizenship of Helmut Oberlander, an ethnic German from Ukraine, Justice Robert D�cary, with the concurrence of Justices J. Edgar Sexton and B. Malone stated:

"The Governor in Council is not, of course, deciding as a matter of law whether a person is a war criminal, but it cannot apply the war criminals policy to a person unless it first satisfies itself, to use the very words of the policy, that 'there is evidence of direct involvement in or complicity of war crimes or crimes against humanity'."