[Congressional Bills 111th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1704 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. 1704
To hold the surviving Nazi war criminals accountable for the war
crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity they committed during
World War II, by encouraging foreign governments to more efficiently
prosecute and extradite wanted criminals.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
September 24, 2009
Mr. Nelson of Florida (for himself, Ms. Snowe, and Mr. Cardin)
introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To hold the surviving Nazi war criminals accountable for the war
crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity they committed during
World War II, by encouraging foreign governments to more efficiently
prosecute and extradite wanted criminals.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``World War II War Crimes
Accountability Act of 2009''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) Surviving Nazi war criminals are becoming increasingly
rare.
(2) The identities of many of the remaining criminals were
made known only after the end of the Cold War and the collapse
of Communist governments throughout eastern Europe.
(3) In most of these formerly communist countries, the
volume of available information is enormous, and the available
resources to study it and identify war crimes suspects is
comparatively small.
(4) In the United States, the Office of Special
Investigations (OSI) of the Department of Justice is
responsible for detecting, investigating and taking legal
action to denaturalize or deport persons who took part in Nazi-
sponsored acts of persecution committed abroad between 1933 and
1945.
(5) As of April 2009, OSI had successfully prosecuted more
than 107 people involved in Nazi war crimes who were residing
in the United States.
(6) As a government office with limited resources, OSI is
under enormous strain to identify and prosecute those criminals
identified by newly released records before it is too late.
(7) Some foreign governments hinder the efforts of OSI,
Congress, and the United States Government to extradite or
deport convicted Nazi war criminals from the United States to
their country of origin or other relevant jurisdiction.
(8) Certain nongovernmental organizations have been
instrumental in the search for wanted Nazi war crimes suspects
for over 60 years.
(9) Simon Wiesenthal, a survivor of the Nazi death camps
whose work stands as a reminder and a warning for future
generations, dedicated his life to--
(A) documenting the crimes of the Holocaust; and
(B) hunting down the perpetrators still at large.
(10) As founder and head of the Jewish Documentation Center
in Vienna, Simon Wiesenthal successfully brought to justice
wanted Nazi war criminals, including Franz Stangl, the
commandant of the Treblinka death camp.
(11) Mr. Wiesenthal's work, which contributed enormously to
the modern understanding of justice, war crimes, and crimes
against humanity, should be continued.
(12) In 2002, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in collaboration
with the Targum Shlishi Foundation of Miami, Florida, launched
Operation: Last Chance to maximize the identification and help
facilitate the prosecution of the remaining unprosecuted Nazi
war criminals, helping to achieve justice for the victims of
the Holocaust.
(13) Of the most guilty Nazis and Nazi collaborators still
at large, Operation: Last Chance has identified the following
suspects:
(A) Dr. Aribert Heim, who served as a medical
doctor at the Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Mauthausen
concentration camps, is the most wanted ex-Nazi still
at large. His most terrible crimes were committed at
Mauthausen, where he murdered hundreds of inmates by
administering lethal injections of phenol to their
hearts or by other torturous killing methods during the
fall of 1941. Press reports indicate that he may have
died in Cairo, Egypt in 1992, but serious doubts remain
about the veracity of that information. If he is alive,
his current whereabouts are unknown.
(B) Dr. Sandor Kepiro, who served as an officer in
the Hungarian gendarmerie, was 1 of several Hungarian
officers convicted in 1944 for the mass murder of
several thousand civilians (mostly Jews) in the city of
Novi Sad on January 23, 1942. In the wake of the
occupation of Hungary in March 1944, he was pardoned,
promoted, and returned to active service. He escaped to
Austria in 1945, fled to Argentina in 1948, and
returned to Hungary in 1996.
(C) Milivoj Asner, who served as the police chief
of the city of Slavonska Pozega. During 1941 and 1942,
Mr. Asner orchestrated the robbery, persecution and
destruction of the local Serb, Jewish and Gypsy
communities, which culminated in the deportation of
hundreds of civilians to Ustasha concentration camps,
where most of the deportees were murdered. After his
exposure in Operation: Last Chance, the former police
chief later escaped once again to Klagenfurt, Austria,
where he currently resides.
(D) Charles Zentai is accused of murdering 18-year-
old Peter Balazs, a Jewish boy he caught riding a
Budapest tram without the requisite yellow star on
November 8, 1944. Zentai was able to immigrate to
Australia in February 1950, where he currently lives.
Hungary is seeking his extradition.
(E) Algimantas Dailide, who volunteered for
Lithuania's secret police, Saugumas, arrested 10 Jews
and 2 Poles, including women and children, who were
attempting to escape from the Vilnius ghetto in October
1941 and turned them over to the Nazis for likely
execution. After Mr. Dailide's deportation from the
United States to Germany, the Lithuanian courts
convicted him for his crimes in 2006, but refused to
imprison him on medical grounds. He currently resides
in Kirchberg, Germany.
(F) Harry Mannil is accused of playing a role in
the death of at least 7 Jews and Communists while
serving in the Estonian police in 1941 and 1942 during
the Nazi occupation of Estonia. Although Estonian
prosecutors have claimed on multiple occasions, most
recently in 2006, that they had uncovered no evidence
proving Mr. Mannil's guilt of war crimes, they
discovered that the 7 people he interrogated were later
executed. Mr. Mannil is living in Venezuela and is
barred from entering the United States.
(G) Mikhail Gorshkow is alleged to have been an
interrogator for the Nazi Gestapo and is accused of
helping kill about 3,000 men, women, and children in
the Slutsk ghetto in Minsk, Belarus. He was stripped of
his United States citizenship and ordered deported for
concealing his wartime service for the Nazis. He is
under investigation in Estonia.
(H) Alois Brunner, a key operative of Adolf
Eichmann, was responsible for the deportation of 47,000
Jews from Austria, 44,000 Jews from Greece, 23,500 Jews
from France, and 14,000 Jews from Slovakia to Nazi
death camps. He lived in Syria for decades and the
Syrian government refused to cooperate with
international prosecution efforts. He was convicted in
absentia for his crimes by France. He was born in 1912
and last seen in 2001. While is it doubtful that he is
still alive, there is no conclusive evidence of his
death.
SEC. 3. SENSE OF THE SENATE.
It is the sense of the Senate that--
(1) the United States should actively encourage extradition
and prosecution of the remaining Nazi war criminals (as
described in section 212(a)(3)(E) of the Immigration and
Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1182 (a)(3)(E)));
(2) the Simon Wiesenthal Center should be commended for its
historic work in bringing to light the atrocities of the
Holocaust and in advancing justice for Nazi war criminals
through Operation: Last Chance; and
(3) the Office of Special Investigation of the Department
of Justice is advancing the declared foreign policy of the
United States by bringing wanted World War II criminals to
justice and should be commended for its actions.
SEC. 4. DESIGNATION OF VISA WAIVER PROGRAM COUNTRIES.
(a) Cooperation.--After a country is initially designated as a visa
waiver program country under section 217(c) of the Immigration and
Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1187(c)), the Attorney General, in evaluating
the effect that such designation would have on the law enforcement and
security interests of the United States under paragraph (2)(C) of such
section, shall consider the extent to which such country is cooperating
in--
(1) extraditing or prosecuting wanted or indicted Nazi war
criminals to the relevant jurisdiction; and
(2) admitting into their territory aliens described in
section 212(a)(3)(E)(i) and ordered removed from the United
States by a United States immigration judge, the Board of
Immigration Appeals, or a Federal court.
(b) Presidential Discretion.--
(1) In general.--If the President determines that it would
not be in the national interest of the United States to
terminate a country's designation as a visa waiver program
country based on the evaluation under subsection (a), the
President may decline to terminate such designation after
providing advance written notification to--
(A) the Committee on Foreign Relations of the
Senate;
(B) the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate;
(C) the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House
of Representatives; and
(D) the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of
Representatives.
(2) Contents.--In providing notification under paragraph
(1), the President shall--
(A) identify each crime suspect described in
subsection (a)(2) whose admission has not been
effected; and
(B) submit copies of all decisions rendered by
United States immigration judges, the Board of
Immigration Appeals, and Federal courts that relate to
such crime suspects.
SEC. 5. ANNUAL REPORT.
In each of the fiscal years 2010 through 2014, the President shall
submit an annual report to the committees listed in section 4(b)(1),
which describes, for each country that has a pending application for
entry into or renewal of the visa waiver program, whether such country
is--
(1) cooperating satisfactorily in extraditing or deporting
wanted Nazi war crimes suspects to the jurisdiction in which
they have been indicted or convicted;
(2) prosecuting wanted Nazi war crimes suspects effectively
within such country's jurisdiction; and
(3) cooperating satisfactorily in admitting to the
territory of such country aliens described in section
212(a)(3)(E)(i) and ordered removed from the United States
territory by a United States immigration judge, the Board of
Immigration Appeals, or a Federal court.
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