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I am grateful for the kind assistance of Mr Grant Niemann, of Flinders University, formerly Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, my junior counsel in the Polyukhovich and Wagner prosecutions, later prosecution trial counsel at ICTY; His Honour Judge Michael David QC of the District Court of South Australia who acted for the accused and made available to me his paper on the defence perspective; Mr David Bevan of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, author of "A Case to Answer", Wakefield Press, South Australia 1994 in which he chronicled the prosecutions and particularly Mark Aarons, author of a number of valuable studies on the presence of war criminals in Australia, notably War Criminals Welcome Australia, a Sanctuary for Fugitive War Criminals since 1945 published by Black Inc, Melbourne 2001, which records the political history of the prosecutions. This paper merely gives a summary overview of the proceedings brought against the three individuals to whom I refer from the point of view of a prosecutor. The prosecution of Polyukhovich has been the subject of a most detailed report by David Bevan in his text "A Case to Answer". That report was compiled both from the transcript and Mr Bevan's constant attendances at the committal and at the trial. The background and the more detailed political history underlying the investigations and prosecutions has been chronicled by Mr Mark Aarons in the book to which I have referred War Criminals Welcome Australia, a Sanctuary for Fugitive War Criminals since ¡945.1 commend both of those to the researcher who might like to consider in far more detail that I can deal with in this paper the history and circumstances of the Australian Nazi war crimes prosecutions. At the close of the Second World War the Australian government enacted the War Crimes Act 1945 to provide for the trial and punishment of war criminals. That Act provided for military courts for the trial of war crimes under military law, of persons who were at any time resident in Australia, in respect of war crimes, wherever committed. Military law so far as it related to field general courts martial was applied to the procedure of those courts. Persons convicted of such crimes were liable to the death penalty or any lesser penalty. After the disruption in Europe occasioned by the war Australia accepted a mass of immigrants. As is recorded in the text published by Mark Aarons to which I have referred in my acknowledgement, amongst those migrating to Australia were a number of persons who had been involved in their respective countries, in the commission of war crimes whether as principals themselves or in aid of Nazi occupying forces. In his book "War Criminals Welcome", Mark Aarons sets out in detail the political history of the amendment to the War Crimes Act 1945. The amended act prescribed for those arrested in Australia for war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined in that Act, a regime involving trials under Australian domestic criminal law in the courts of the States in which they resided in Australia. That amendment had occurred because of a community awareness of the prospect that former Nazi war criminals were obtaining effective sanctuary in Australia which had been generated following Mark Aarons production of a television documentary put to air by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Prior to that community awareness being aroused, there had been a number of Commonwealth police investigations that had identified persons reasonably suspected of having been such war criminals. In addition a number of reports had been received from the Soviet Union in particular, referring to such persons and in some cases seeking extradition. Until that community awareness was aroused, the post war Australian coalition governments had refused to prosecute such persons, it being considered that the 1945 War Crimes Act was unsuitable and had refused extradition requests. However during the 1960's and 70's, various immigrants to Australia with a possible history of involvement in war crimes had been identified by investigators. In 1979 the United States announced intensified efforts to deport accused war criminals from that country, and established the Office of Special Investigations to conduct enquiries. Simon Weisenthal and the Australian group, Research Services, had disclosed to appropriate Australian Security instrumentalities and various bureaucrats, persons who might be suspected of war crimes. In April 1985

A Summary of the History of Nazi War Crime Trials in Australia / Eine Zusammenfassung der Geschichte der Nazi-Kriegsverbrecherprozesse in Australien