A brief history of impunity: the UK and War Crimes 1945 – 2025
Rwanda Justice 4 Genocide
Justice, the UK and War Crimes 1945-2023: a sorry tale of denial, apathy, ignorance and cynical political avoidance over eight decades
‘To take no action would taint the United Kingdom with the slur of being a haven for war criminals’
(Hetherington and Chalmers, Parliamentary War Crimes Report, 1989)
‘To deter atrocities and achieve justice for victims, perpetrators of genocide must be held accountable for their actions’ (UK ambassador Lyall Grant, speech to UN Security Council, 16 April 2014)
‘No country is more committed than we are to bringing war criminals to justice’
(Boris Johnson, Prime Minister’s Questions, 8 June 2022)
The long-term failure of the United Kingdom to take seriously its commitment to providing justice to victims of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi should be seen in a far wider context. This is not a ‘one-off’ failure; it is part of a long history of an appalling disregard by the UK towards its international, moral and ethical responsibilities that shames a nation – and which the UK has been undertaking since 1947. The UK state policy of judicial avoidance is due to failures of government, resources and a deliberate underestimation of the gravity of the crime and the Uk’s international obligations. When, in 2000, a Simon Wiesenthal Centre report on the prosecution of war criminals ‘controversially’ put the UK in the same category as Argentina – a country notorious for its point-blank refusal to extradite or try leading Nazi Holocaust suspects living openly within its society, there was a storm of protest by the British government. Yet two decades, and still no justice later, it is very hard to argue with this dire assessment.
In the 78 years since the end of World War Two, the UK has become a haven for genocidaire and war criminals. That is the stark – and deeply unpalatable – truth.
Successive governments of each new generation have ensured that perpetrators are protected and victims ignored. In 1947, the UK government of Clement Attlee made the decision to ‘wind down’ the trials of Nazi war crimes perpetrators, while at the same time allowing thousands of former Waffen SS to make their homes in the UK despite strong suspicions many had been involved in war time atrocities including the Holocaust. For example, in May and June of 1947, 8,570 members of the notorious Waffen-SS Galician Division were brought to the UK to work and settle. Attlee’s government was concerned to address the post war labour shortage, especially in manual labour work such as coal mines. What crimes some of those SS officers had committed in Poland, Belarus, and the Baltic nations was inconsequential by comparison. Screening the new arrivals for possible involvement in war crimes – and especially the Holocaust – was perfunctory and in most cases non-existent. Some of these SS later emigrated to north America, notably Canada, but many stayed in the UK to build new lives. That some of today’s senior politicians seemingly know nothing about this highly controversial event and even deny it ever occurred shows a remarkable level of ignorance that is predicated on finding facts they find totally unpalatable and so they presume must be untrue. Sadly, Atlee’s attitude to war criminals and war crimes was to set the benchmark for the next 80 years of official ‘policy’.
Forty years after the SS battalion was welcomed to the UK, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles publicly noted that the UK was home to dozens of Holocaust perpetrators. As a result of media headlines and pressure, the Thatcher government in 1986/7 commissioned a parliamentary investigation. It was perhaps a shock to politicians of the time, or perhaps not, to find that the UK did not have laws in place for 40 years after the end of the war to hold Holocaust perpetrators living in the UK to account – even if it had found the will to do so. It is a quite astonishing revelation. Did the post war governments of Atlee, Churchill, Eden, Douglas-Hume, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan and Thatcher really think there was not a single Nazi war criminal in the UK despite mass immigration post war from European displacement camps and of former POWs? Or was it more a case of ‘out of (public) sight, out of (legal) mind? A motto that seems to be still around today.
The subsequent parliamentary 1989 report of Sir Thomas Hetherington and William Chalmers uncovered highly uncomfortable facts about the level of UK government and judicial apathy and denial over many years.
In addressing the UK’s dire record in prosecuting war crimes, the Hetherington and Chalmers report noted:
…The crimes committed are so monstrous that they cannot be condoned. Their prosecution could act as a deterrent to others in future wars. To take no action would taint the United Kingdom with the slur of being a haven for war criminals. British governments have never taken a decision not to prosecute war criminals…. Financial constraints should not be allowed to obstruct the course of justice in relation to such serious charges. We are firmly of the view, therefore, that some action should be taken in respect of alleged war criminals …. We do recognise that this will place a considerable burden on the existing authorities. Adequate resources should be made available in England and in Scotland to the respective investigating and prosecuting authorities and to the courts, to allow war crimes to be fully investigated and where appropriate prosecutions to take place.
The result of this report was three years of parliamentary argument between those who demanded a War Crimes Act that would, for the first time, allow the prosecution in UK courts of foreign nationals suspected of committing crimes against humanity on foreign soil during the war – something that had incredibly not been considered nor enacted during the previous four decades of impunity – and those, mostly in the House of Lords, who argued for a continuation of impunity and apathy.
In 1991, despite the House of Lords voting twice against the Bill becoming law, the War Crimes Act was passed. However, this was made possible only after the government resorted to using the 1911 Parliament Act for the very first time to override the House of Lords.
See: UK Parliament: Debates on War Crimes 1988-95
The following decade, instead of marking a period when the UK could make up for its political and moral failures by finally holding Nazi war criminals to account, turned out to be just ‘more of the same.’ (UK war criminals legal cases/pdfs) A number of high-profile Nazi criminal suspects were highlighted by media reports but the turgid process of legal action and political avoidance meant the already elderly perpetrators were able, in all cases bar one, to die ‘innocent’ in their beds before facing justice.
Alexander Schweidler, a guard at the infamous Mauthausen camp who had been deported from the USA to the UK in 1994 after evidence of his war crimes came to light, settled down to get his state pension and live untroubled until his death in 2000.
Antanas Gecas, a notorious Lithuanian war criminal who came to the UK to work in the coal mines in 1947 was given citizenship in 1956. Denounced as a war criminal in the Sottish media – a verdict upheld in a civil court action in 1992 – he escaped justice after the Crown Office ruled there was ‘insufficient’ evidence against him. In 2001 an attempt by Lithuania to have him extradited came to nothing when he died before the case could be heard.
Szymon Serafinowicz, accused of the mass murder of Jews in Belarus, was the first to be put on trial for Holocaust-related crimes, but proceedings collapsed almost immediately in 1997 after he was ruled too old and ill to face justice.
Konrad Kalejs, the Latvian war criminal, successfully exploited the legal/political ambivalence and appeal system from when his dark past as a Nazi mass murderer was first uncovered in 1984. Moving each time to a new country when it looked like a prosecution was possible, Kalejs showed how unfit for purpose global war crimes laws were and how easy it is to ‘disappear’ in countries like the UK, Australia and Canada where prosecutions are highly improbable, if not non-existent. He died in 2001 with justice still some way from ever catching up with him.
Anton Husak, alleged to have taken part in three large scale massacres of thousands of Jews, was told by the CPS in 1999 that he would not be prosecuted for his appalling crimes. Husak had been on a list of war criminals supplied to the UK government in 1988 by the USSR. Again, he got away with mass murder due to age and infirm and the CPS/Blair government failing in its duty to prosecute.
Anthony Sawoniuk – the only war criminal ever convicted by the UK. pic: Shutterstock
In 1999 the UK managed its one and only successful prosecution of a war criminal – Anthony Sawoniuk – who had lived a comfortable life in the UK for fifty years before justice very belatedly caught up with him. He had worked as a ticket collector for British Rail for many years – a peaceful job that was a far cry from his days as head of a Nazi auxilliary police unit, personally responsible for many acts of horrific savagery and murder against countless Jewish residents of Domachevo in what is now Belarus, then the Soviet Russia. He died of old age in Norwich prison after serving only six years of his life sentence.
As of 2024, the UK has never held anyone to account for the crime of genocide
A standalone police war crimes investigation unit that had been formed as a result of 1991 Act was subsequently disbanded, as was the All-Party Parliamentary Group on War Crimes (all party parl. War crimes group/pdfs) that had campaigned in the mid 1980s specifically for legislation to allow the UK to enact its moral and legal obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention. After the sole 1999 conviction of Sawoniuk, the UK authorities quietly shelved all future attempts to hold Nazi war criminals to account; the argument was the now elderly war criminals were too infirm to put on trial, the witnesses and survivors of their crimes also too old and frail to testify successfully and the events too far in the past to make any investigation worth the time and money. It should be noted that Germany has continued, in the 20 years since the UK gave up on justice, to hold former Holocaust perpetrators, whatever their age, to account. In doing so they have not just brought justice to survivors but have actively assisted the fight against the constant rise of genocide and Holocaust denial which judicial inertia, as in the UK, inevitably promotes.
A case in point: Stanislaw Chrzanowski, a 96 year-old war criminal who had settled in the UK after the war when he had taken part in Nazi mass shootings of Jews and prisoners in Slonim, Poland. He was investigated by the Met’s war crimes unit in the 1990s but, like Gecas, it was decided by the CPS there was insufficient evidence. However, German authorities kept Chrzanowski under active investigation even after UK authorities had given up their cursory efforts. Sadly, Chrzanowski again escaped when old age caught up with him before German war crimes justice could do so.
Rwandan genocidaire Col. Tharcisse Muvunyi – arrested in UK but tried in Arusha Pic: BBC.
One exception to the above compendium of UK political and judicial inaction was provided on 5 February 2000. Col. Tharcisse Muvunyi, accused of killing tens of thousands of Tutsis during the genocide, was arrested on a warrant issued by the UN International Criminal Court for Rwanda (ICTR). Muvunyi had been living in Lewisham, south east London since March 1998 with his wife and three children who had already arrived in the UK where they had applied for political asylum. He was transferred to Arusha from the UK in October 2000. On 9 December 2006 Muvunyi was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. This judgement was later overturned on appeal and in a re-trial/appeal he was sentenced to 15 for direct and public incitement to commit genocide.
In 2006, in frustration at the continued failure of UK justice, an Early Day Motion (EDA) in the House of Commons was signed by 39 MPs. It stated:
That this House notes that since the War Crimes Act 1991 became law there have been very few prosecutions; further notes that there is widespread concern that former Nazi war criminals have been living with impunity in the UK; believes the resources available to the police to bring these evil men to justice may not be adequate, with time not on the side of the prosecutors; and calls upon the Government to give a progress report to the House, with particular reference to the cases of Avtandil Pardshanadze, also known as Antony or Anton Husak, former SS Galiziens Bohdan Tymkewycz, Wolodymyr Lenczyk, Wasyl Woloszyn, Iwan Szczur, Mychaylo Trembluk, Iwan Serbyn, Roman Bych, Mykola Lehkyj, Wolodymyr Szczyhol, Wolodymyr Panasiuk, Stefan Polotniuk, Victor Booskariw, Iwan Jurgens, Stephan Androusynk, Bohdcn Romanowsky, Jurig Opara, Janis Lipe, Wladymyr and Wolodimir Shur and Peter Glusch.
(HoC: Early Day Motion on Nazi war criminals in UK 2006 pdf)
A change in law – but no change in practice
In 2009, it became apparent that a legal loophole meant that while Nazi war criminals could now be prosecuted for crimes committed seventy years before, legally the UK was still unable to prosecute genocide suspects and/or war criminals who had committed their appalling crimes after the Second World War but before 2001, and who were now resident in the country. The 2001 International Criminal Court Act that had brought the UK into line on the prosecution of genocide and war crimes only allowed the prosecution of such crimes after 2001, meaning crimes committed in Rwanda in 1994 were not covered. With the UK appeal court refusing the extradition of four Rwandan genocide suspects in April 2009, it was clear this loophole meant the UK was unable, under existing legislation, to prosecute them itself. A campaign by NGO’s including the Aegis Trust, Redress and Human Rights Watch demanded the loophole be closed so the UK did not become a (continuing) haven for perpetrators of the most serious of crimes.
The law was finally amended in 2009 (2009 war crimes law amendment pdfs) with the passing of Section 70 of the Justice and Coroners Act. It allowed those suspected of severe human rights offences dating back to 1991 to be prosecuted in UK courts.
However, despite the legislation now being in place and judges ruling all of the Rwandan accused having prima facie cases to answer in a court of law, the UK government has, despite countless promises in parliament and in public, failed to take any action.
Freedom of Information requests (UK freedom of information/pdfs) to the Ministry of Justice and Home Office over the past 15 years have uncovered the startling fact that hundreds of suspected war criminals, genocidaire and those suspected of very serious human rights abuses are living with impunity from justice in the UK. With courts refusing extradition back to countries that include Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Syria, Libya and Sri Lanka due to fears they will not receive a fair trial, and the government blocking the investigation and trial of suspected mass murderers in UK courts, the result is total impunity, in blatant contradiction of the State’s legal and moral obligation under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
The current case of the five Rwandan genocide suspects is certainly the tip of the iceberg. There are, undoubtedly, other Rwandans living in the UK who were involved in the genocide against the Tutsi but who live free from investigation and prosecution. There are also hundreds of war criminals from other countries who have so far escaped being held to account.
Rwanda Justice 4 Genocide urgently calls for the following to be resourced and enacted:
The re-establishment of a standalone UK War Crimes Unit: this must be prioritised, and it must equally be fully resourced and skilled in investigating severe human rights violations – including genocide – that may have been committed abroad and where suspects are now resident in the UK. It cannot be left to the UK media to do the work of the police and Home Office in uncovering those suspected of serious war crimes and then pressing the state to take action, as happened in all five cases of the Rwandan accused.
Urgently resource and upskill the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS): At present, due to the lack of any such prosecutions or trials in the UK, the CPS has a profound skills shortage when it comes to the ability to fight highly complex war crimes cases. By contrast, as the extradition case(s) with the Rwandan accused has shown all too clearly, highly skilled and experienced defence lawyers who have worked for years at the ICTR/Y defending genocidaire means they have clear strategy and ideological lines of defence for their clients, using current political, legal and human rights lobbies to effectively obfuscate, diminish and deny their clients past actions. Given the CPS can only move forward on war crimes cases when there is a ‘green light’ from government (attorney general) – despite the supposed division between the UK executive and judicial powers – the government must allow the CPS leave to fight such serious cases rather than block them.
Effective and coherent screening of refugees/immigrants/asylum applicants: In the period directly after the end of the Second World War, with large amounts of displaced people on the European continent seeking new lives and employment and an urgent need in the UK for cheap foreign labour (especially in the coal mines), political and economic considerations were put before an effective screening process to stop war criminals entering the UK.
Now, 80 years on, the same is still true. The screening process today is not fit for purpose. The ease with which war crimes perpetrators have been able to change their names and personal histories during their initial application for leave to remain/residency or even later during applications for UK citizenship, points to a clear weakness in the screening system which is underfunded and under resourced. Once settled in the UK, war criminals/genocidaire are able to make full use of human rights laws to protect them from extradition or judicial proceedings against them here in the UK. The ‘damage’ is effectively done once they have entered the UK and if Freedom of Information requests to the Home Office during the past decade are even remotely accurate, it means hundreds of suspected mass killers are now living without fear of prosecution/extradition in the UK.
Political/judicial will to take action by the UK government and police seems based purely on media pressure and information: this must surely be changed. The five UK genocide suspects were uncovered in 2006 not by screening from UK border authorities or later police investigations but by journalists and NGOs. The police finally acted only after the individuals had been exposed in the media and Rwanda had notified authorities that the men should be extradited to face justice in the country where their alleged crimes were committed. The UK government moved only when pressed to do so by the UK media outcry and the Rwandan authorities. Surely the UK government must be able to act independently of other pressure? – if prosecuting war criminals openly living and flourishing in its society is not a priority one can only wonder what sort of society the government wishes to foster.
Words Vs action: The UK government has to take seriously its international commitment to ‘prevent and punish’ genocide and crimes against humanity with more than just fine rhetoric in parliament. Over the past decades since the end of the Second World War in 1945, justice has not been served by eloquent speeches and ministers promising with public relations soundbites that the UK will always take every effort to prosecute war criminals. The reality is that it is undeniable that successive UK governments have colluded in allowing the country to become a retirement location of choice for war criminals. While government ministers have been publicly very vocal in portraying the UK as a safe destination for survivors from mass violence, they have been equally quiet about the killers the UK has welcomed.
Words must make way for action
In 2014, as part of the international 20th commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi, UK ambassador to the UN Lyall Grant produced a memorable address that was highly emotive and full of vigour for action. He urged all countries to sign up to the Genocide Convention and ratify membership of the ICC. He demanded, with no apparent feeling of irony that: ‘It is vital that States cooperate with the ICC so it can deliver accountability where national authorities are unable or unwilling to act. There must be no safe harbour for those who commit atrocities...’ Alas, the UK government, when not avoiding the issue for the past several decades, has resorted to high sounding speeches and statements with no action.
Refusal to Extradite: The UK judiciary has set a very high bar for suspects to be extradited to their country of origin where alleged crimes took place. The expectation of extradition judges is that if they deny extradition, justice will then take place in UK courts if they find a prima facie case to answer. In short, Denial of extradition has not been – and is not expected to be – a denial of justice overall.
However, it is clear there is a definite impasse here. The government has not made available resources to allow prosecutions in the UK despite laws passed to allow this and despite an expectation by the extradition justices that this will take place.
In the case of the Rwandan genocide suspects, the UK is an outlier among other western nations who have extradited genocide suspects – for example the USA, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Sweden and the United Nations – have all fully assessed the Rwandan court system as being able to give the accused fair trials.
If extradition is refused, UK courts must be fully resourced to allow suspects to be tried here. This must include prioritising cases against individuals who have lived in the UK for many years without hindrance from the law purely due to the cynical de-resourcing and de-prioritising of cases against foreign genocidaire and war criminals as ‘not in the public interest.’
Until the UK takes seriously its moral and judicial responsibilities on this urgent and grave matter, it will continue to play host to hundreds of mass murderers.
The cost of doing nothing:
The UK government over 8 decades seems to believe there is NO COST in allowing war criminals to live here and enjoy impunity…
But there is a very real cost of not holding perpetrators to account – it means the UK has :
1. Failed to uphold its own legal framework: UK law was specifically amended in 2009 to allow those suspected of genocide and war crimes that took place between 1991 and 2000 to face trial. So far this legislation has not been used in regard to the five Rwandan genocide suspects. If the law was changed for public relations purposes only and not for being actively used, the UK government should come clean and say so.
2. Failed to abide by the 1948 Genocide Convention which the UK ratified and has, over several decades, made great play in supporting and holding other nations to account for not ratifying. The Convention requires states to ‘prevent and punish’ genocide – yet in 1994 the John Major government did all in its power to block meaningful international intervention to stop the genocide against the Tutsi. And governments since have ignored insistent cries by survivors to punish perpetrators who came to the UK to ‘reinvent’ new and family-friendly versions of themselves that forget and deny their previous bloody pasts.
The UK government has recently made great media noise about sending its own war crimes expert investigators to Ukraine to assist the search for evidence there of possible genocide/crimes against humanity committed by Russia. Yet the UK has hundreds of suspected war criminals living in its own country that it does not investigate despite officials flagging them up as having cases to answer. The prosecution of war criminals should not be treated as a political public relations stunt.
3. Failed to uphold historical truth and memory and failed to fight genocide denial: The last truth about genocide is the spread of genocide denial which begins even before the last victim is killed. Perpetrators and their supporters who escape justice, even more in these days of social media, are free to spread lies and disinformation and taunt survivors who are victimised all over again. Historical truth is lost. War crimes trials play a vital role in revealing this truth to the present and the future generations about what occurred. Every document, witness testimony, audio-visual evidence, is a building block to fight denial in the future and for justice in the present.
4. Failed to treat all acts of mass killing in the same manner: How else does one make sense of the fact the UK government moved diplomatic and political mountains to ensure an individual accused of complicity in the May 2017 Manchester arena bomb was investigated, arrested in Libya, swiftly extradited back to the UK, put on trial and sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the murder of 22 British people just three years after the crime. Yet five Rwandan suspects remain free in the UK 16 years after they were first arrested and are accused of killing not twenty-two innocent people but thousands. The only difference is their alleged victims were Rwandans in Rwanda.
The same Met Police Unit, S.O.15, was – and is – involved in investigating both the Libyan/Manchester and the Rwandan crimes. Yet there is a huge difference between terrorism and war crimes. The UK authorities seem unable or more likely unwilling to understand this – and as a result to fund and enable separate police units to undertake these two highly important, sensitive but totally different jobs.
African lives matter. Genocide is a crime against humanity – not just against a particular nationality or individuals. Universal Jurisdiction allows the trial of foreign criminal wherever they now reside. So why does the UK fail to uphold its legal obligations?
Behind each and every individual genocidaire and/or war criminal are dozens, hundreds, thousands of individual innocent human lives that have been traumatised, violated and possibly ended as a result of the actions of this sole killer. Individual family members left bereft of sons, daughters, mothers, fathers and grandparents. Individuals left to live without their loved ones, and knowing that their killers have got away with murder.
Genocide is not an ordinary crime……….
… It is not theft or burglary … It is not a speeding offence or shop lifting… It is not grievous bodily harm or manslaughter... To treat it as an ordinary crime of little merit that can be ignored, down-played and disregarded is to dishonour the victims, the survivors and the truth.
History will judge the perpetrators even if the UK government will not…
But it will also judge those politicians who have seemingly condoned such terrible crimes over several decades by their failures to act for that truth and justice they make such public claims to represent.