56 No. 72 JUSTICE n 1986, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre issued a report on the large number of Nazi-era war criminals who had managed to become UK residents and, in many cases, UK citizens. The Thatcher Government set up an inquiry, which was led by the retired Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Thomas Hetherington. The HetheringtonChalmers report (1989) said that legislation was required. (“The crimes committed are so monstrous that they cannot be condoned…. To take no action would taint the UK with the slur of being a haven for war criminals.”) The Government introduced the War Crimes Bill and forced it onto the statute book amidst strong resistance. The 1991 Act (the Act) provided for the prosecution of acts amounting to violation of the laws of war committed in Germany, or in territory under German occupation, between September 1, 1939, and June 5, 1945. Such prosecution could only be brought against a person who, though not British at the time of the alleged crime, had become a British subject or was resident in the UK, the Isle of Man, or the Channel Islands as of or after March 1990. Ultimately, there was only one successful prosecution under the Act. This history was powerfully told by David Cesarani in Justice Delayed – How Britain Became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (Heinemann, 1992). In 2001, a paperback version of the book (Phoenix Press) was published with an Afterword taking the story up to 2001. Silverman and Sherwood’s book refers only briefly to that history. They appear to assume that the reader already knows it, which obviously may not be the case. Jon Silverman was a respected BBC news journalist for 25 years. He is now Emeritus Professor of Media and Criminal Justice at the University of Bedfordshire. Robert Sherwood, a law graduate, was a Detective Inspector in the Metropolitan Police who, after retiring, obtained a Ph.D. in the field of Holocaust and war crimes. It is not stated how the two authors collaborated, but it is clear that Silverman himself took part in some of the investigations they describe. The object of their book, they say, was to seek answers to some questions not previously explored: Why was there only one conviction when several hundred names came under scrutiny? Who were the other suspects? Why did the Crown Prosecution Service rule that perpetrators responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths should not face charges? Why were the issues at trial narrowed by the prosecution to the extent that the crimes were effectively decoupled from the Holocaust? And why do we know almost nothing about the thinking behind the crucial decisions? Their research included interviews with some of those who had made relevant decisions. Finding usable evidence of crimes committed more than 50 years earlier was bound to be extremely difficult, particularly because of the prosecution’s decision that usable evidence had to come from living eyewitnesses who could identify the suspect as the perpetrator. The prosecuting barristers (Treasury Counsel) advised the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that war crimes cases had to be handled like any ordinary case. The authors cavil at this decision, but it is difficult to see how the prosecution could have opted for alternative procedures, given that the Act did not authorize any departure from the ordinary rules of evidence. An alternative option could have been to limit prosecutions under the Act to cases where the victims were Jewish civilians. Senior Treasury Counsel Sir John Nutting, who decided against limiting victims to Jewish civilians, said: “We felt it would have unnecessarily complicated the prosecution because such crimes would have been called war reprisals” (p.13). Another narrowing criterion that the authors questioned was the requirement that cases could only be brought against persons who were in “a position of command.” There was no basis for this in the legislation. Sir John Nutting said, “What worried us was being criticised for going after the small fry, foot soldiers as it were, when much bigger fish had been allowed to go scot free after the war” (p. 23). (Despite that policy, the only person convicted was someone who had not been in a position of command.) Reviewed by Michael Zander I Safe Haven By Jon Silverman and Robert Sherwood Oxford University Press (2023, 309 pp.)
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