New Leahy Bill Enhances Federal Efforts To Track Down And Deport War Criminals

July 16, 1999

WASHINGTON (July 16) -- Federal investigators need additional authority to pursue the next generation of war criminals and others guilty of torture or genocide in their homelands, says Sen. Patrick Leahy, who introduced a bill Thursday to bolster the pursuit of these individuals by expanding the charter of the Office Special Investigations within the Department of Justice.

Leahy's new bill, the "Anti-Atrocity Alien Deportation Act," will help law enforcement officials better respond to cases of suspected war criminals and human rights abusers, such as the example of Zihad Music, the alleged Serbian war criminal now living in Winooski. The Senator's proposed legislation would:

bar admission into the United States and authorize the deportation of aliens who have engaged in acts of torture abroad; provide statutory authorization for -- and expand the jurisdiction of -- the Office of Special Investigations (OSI, whose specialized task is to hunt Nazi war criminals) within the Department of Justice to investigate, prosecute and remove any alien who participated in torture and genocide abroad -- not just Nazis; Authorize additional funding to ensure that OSI has adequate resources to fulfill its current mission of hunting Nazi war criminals.

"We have unwittingly sheltered the oppressors along with the oppressed for too long. War criminals should find no sanctuary in loopholes in our current immigration policy," said Leahy, the Democratic leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over OSI and immigration policy. "Too often, once war criminals slip through the immigration nets, they remain in the United States unpunished for their crimes. We need to focus the attention of our law enforcement investigators to prosecute and deport those who have committed atrocities abroad and who now enjoy safe harbor in the United States."

Current law provides that those who participated overseas in Nazi war crimes and genocide are barred from the United States and can be deported, yet those who have committed the criminal act of torture are not. This leads to cases like that of Kelbessa Negewo, a member of the military dictatorship ruling Ethiopia in the 1970s who has been found guilty of torture in a private civil action by an American court but remains in the United States nonetheless because prior laws do not provide explicit authority to investigate, de-naturalize or remove him. The Leahy bill would close this loophole and make those who commit torture abroad inadmissible to and deportable from our country.

By expanding the mission of the Office of Special Investigations to permit that specialized unit to deal with not just Nazi war criminals but war criminals of every stripe, the Leahy bill would tap that well of expertise and result in more prompt, efficient and experienced investigations of suspected war criminals. OSI enjoys a successful track record of hunting down, prosecuting and deporting Nazi war criminals who had slipped into the United States. Since the OSI's inception in 1979, 61 Nazi persecutors have been stripped of their U.S. citizenship, 49 individuals have been removed from the United States and more than 150 have been denied entry.

The case under investigation in Vermont is not an isolated occurrence. The Center for Justice and Accountability, a San Francisco human rights group, has identified about sixty suspected human rights violators now living in the United States.