The average Canadian, who is not very familiar with the details of current Deportation and Denaturalization cases, e.g., that of Wasyl Odynsky, will assume from the adjacent article that the existence of seemingly bona fide deportation cases involving perpetrators accused of modern-day atrocities "proves" the correctness of the Canadian government's hunt for "Nazi war criminals."
Please note that Stewart Bell, the author of the Oct. 12 National Post article, is one of four Toronto-based newspaper journalists who received awards this month from B'nai Brith Canada. On 21 October 2002 Bell, along with Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno, Toronto Sun columnist John Downing and Globe and Mail columnist Marcus Gee, were honoured for "offering accurate discussions of issues affecting Israel and the Jewish community, as well as for their uncompromising condemnation of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism" (Source: JTA, 23.10.02).
 

Note: The Asper family wields enormous control over the dissemination of news in Canada. It is unabashedly Zionist and pro-Israel and disciplines any journalist on its payroll who dissents from the Asper's media empire official take on issues relative to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Indeed those who dare dissent are bluntly reminded that doing so will prove to be a bad career move.

CanWest Global owns 27 daily newspapers. That's a fact. They include the National Post and major newspapers in Ottawa and six of 10 provincial capitals. They distribute 11.4 million copies every week. This is dwarfed by Global's television network, which beams itself to 94 per cent of English-speaking Canada (Source: CanWest Global). The company's radio, film, Internet and entertainment holdings give it unprecedented control over the information Canadians use every day.
-- John Miller
How free is our so-called free press?Toronto Star | April 26, 2002
 

Bell's article is followed by Prof. Lubomyr Luciuk's unpublished letter to the National Post below.

Canadian authorities are on the lookout for more than 90 war criminals who were supposed to be removed from the country due to their involvement in modern-day atrocities but failed to show up for deportation.

A report released yesterday by Citizenship and Immigration Canada said the government did not know the whereabouts of 91 war criminals who vanished before they could be escorted from the country.

The missing war criminals "did not report for removal" and warrants were issued for their arrests, according to the government's fifth annual report on Canada's war crimes program. There is no record of their whereabouts.

The report does not say what countries the war criminals are from or specify the nature of their crimes.

"They could have left of their own accord," said Simone McAndrew, a spokeswoman for the Immigration Department, "but because we haven't confirmed it absolutely, for sure, that warrant stays outstanding."

The missing 91 are in addition to 22 war criminals who could not be sent home because they had no passports, 28 who stalled their deportation by appealing their refugee claims and six who filed court appeals.

A total of 157 war criminals were either lost or could not be sent back to the homelands where they committed their atrocities. "In most cases these impediments to removal are beyond the control of the Department," the report said.

Despite the problems, Canada has succeeded in deporting a record number of war criminals in the past year, including a former deputy prime minister of Afghanistan, a bomb-maker for the Palestinian terror group Hamas and a member of the Yugoslav secret police.

Forty-six refugees suspected of committing atrocities in modern-day conflicts were removed from the country in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2002, up from 42 the year before. The figure, a 10% increase, is in addition to the 445 foreigners not allowed to enter Canada due to war crimes.

The government is investigation 292 war crimes cases involving refugees in Canada, 205 cases regarding immigrants and another 170 cases in which suspects have approached Canadian embassies seeking permission to enter Canada.

Among those caught and sent home were Samuel Ramirez-Perez, a former member of a Guatemalan police unit called Commando Six that was involved in the disappearance of leftist demonstrators in the 1980s.

Although he was removed from Canada under escort in June 2000, Mr. Ramirez-Perez came back. He was identified by police during a routine traffic stop on Jan. 20, 2002, detained and sent back to Guatemala, again under escort, on Feb. 21.

Several political leaders were also caught by war crimes investigators, including a Rwandan official who applied for a visitor visa at the Canadian embassy in Paris but was turned down due to his regime's involvement in genocide. He was coming to Canada at the invitation of the Rwandan Congress of Canada.

The report also says that an Afghan who entered Canada at Niagara Falls, Ont., last December was deported three months later after investigators found he had served as deputy prime minister in the Soviet-installed communist regime that held power in Kabul until 1992.

Also removed were members of guerrilla, paramilitary and terrorist groups such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Qasem Ibrahim Qasem Hussein, a Hamas recruiter who studied bomb-making techniques, was deported to Jordan on March 4.

"Mr. Hussein was complicit in crimes against humanity based on the widespread and systematic murder of Israeli citizens and Palestinian collaborators by Hamas between 1994 and 1998," when he was an active member, it said.

Officials also deported several members of secret police units such as the Leopards, a Haitian army anti-guerrilla group implicated in gross human rights and elections violations. One was removed to Haiti on March 9.

Zoran Vujovic, a member of the Yugoslav secret police who arrived in Vancouver in 1997, was deported on Feb. 20 after he was found to have been complicit in crimes against humanity in Croatia, Bosnia and Albania.

Under Canada's war crimes program, the RCMP, Justice Department and Immigration work together to screen refugees, immigrants and visitors.

Although they have succeeded in identifying many of those responsible for atrocities, the deportation cases often get bogged down in the court system, and the suspects sometimes disappear before they can be sent home.

Denis Coderre, the Minister of Immigration, said the report illustrates the government's commitment to ensuring that Canada is not used as a safe haven by those who have committed war-time abuses in their homelands.
 
 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter to the editor of the National Post
From: Lubomyr Luciuk
To: National Post: letters@nationalpost.com
 

Re: "91 war criminals go on the lam,"
The National Post, 12 October 2002, Stewart Bell

If millions of dollars had not been squandered over the past two decades on a wild goose chase for alleged Nazi war criminals, bagging not a one (media headlines notwithstanding), more resources would have been available for keeping true villains out. Instead, chasing after non-existent Nazis, the nation's gatekeepers and security forces let our country become a haven for modern day war criminals, terrorists and assorted other scoundrels, everything from NKVD officers to communist partisans to the miscreants of the so-called "Russian" Mafia, trafficking in drugs and white slaves. These reprobates remain untroubled by our War Crimes Unit because it's still sexier going after the alleged "Nazis" supposedly hiding here than it is trying to root out and deport actual killers. And, alas, the "Nazis in our midst" swan song still has almost two decades of play left in it.

Yours,
 

Lubomyr Luciuk, PhD
Kingston, Ontario