Nazi War Criminals

The House of Commons voted to allow the first prosecution in Britain of alleged Nazi war criminals. The approval means that the government is virtually certain to introduce legislation next year that would have the effect of charging three aging suspects who are naturalized British citizens. The vote followed the publication in July of a government-commissioned report that there is enough evidence to prosecute the three.

Germany closed a 47-year-old loophole under which Nazi war criminals have been able to draw pension benefits for injuries sustained during World War II. Lawmakers quashed a 1950 rule that prevented regional authorities from refusing such benefits to German residents. War criminals living abroad had been denied such allowances.

Two men who allegedly helped the Nazis persecute Jews and other civilians during World War II have permanently left the United States rather than face legal action, the Justice Department announced. They are the seventh and eighth alleged Nazi war criminals permanently removed by the department's Office of Special Investigations since it was established in 1978 to track down Nazis hiding in this country. The two men were identified as Juozas Kisielaitis, 64, of Shrewsbury, Mass.

Virgil Van Street, 82, an Episcopal priest and lawyer who prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. Street worked as a lawyer in the 1930s and 1940s and served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland. He spent two years in Germany as a prosecutor of World War II Nazi criminals. After the Nuremberg trials, Street joined the Foreign Service. He later attended Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va. and was ordained in 1971. In St. Petersburg, Fla., on Sunday of unannounced causes.

Veteran human rights activist Yuri Orlov confronted Lithuania's chief prosecutor Monday and demanded to know why the newly independent country is exonerating Nazi war criminals. Chief prosecutor Arturas Paulauskas replied that Lithuanian law forbids rehabilitation of people who were convicted of genocide in Soviet courts.

Britain announced Monday that a government panel will investigate allegations made more than a year ago that 16 Nazi war criminals settled in the country after World War II, including a Lithuanian accused of leading mass executions of Jews. Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, Cabinet minister in charge of law and order, announced in Parliament the formation of a two-man panel to examine charges that alleged Nazi war criminals settled in Britain after lying to gain entry.