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AZI-HUxTERS ruefully call it the "Pinochet Defence". lt's the tactic whereby the dwindling number of the worldt old Nazis, most now well into 'heir 80s,,uddenly - ljle rhe,ged Ch,lean dictaror - r?ke ill ,round the rime a court decision is made regarding tieir exradition to a counrv which might try them for rheir crimes. ln America in crses where that\ occurred, the US Justice Departmentt Offic€ of Special lnvesngations, which .o-ordrnates nrtionwide Nazi hunts, appoints a teim ofdoctors to check on the individual concerned. Ifth€s€ physicians pdge the suspect to be finer than appearances suggest. papers are srgned and the individual in quesrion suddenly finds him.elfbeing wheeled out the hosprt:l and transponed srraight onto a plane to a less than hospitable count y. This week, intens€ controversy surrounds the nan at rhe centre ofScotland's own war crime case: Artenas Cecevlous aka Arron <strong>Gecas</strong>. or Big Ton) <strong>Gecas</strong>, '5 he was ldros'n to hi5 worknares on the Nationrl Coal Boird. The 85-yeaFold form€r mining engjneer rernains apparently ill in Ed;nburgh's Uberton Hospital after suffering a stroke a month or so before ScottishJustice MinhterJirn Wallace finally hsued a warrant for his arrest at the end ofJuly. <strong>Gecas</strong> was a healdry man over a decade ago when he could have been puton tdal: now he has failed in a physiol sense bur succeeded legalJyin eudins iusrice. Ib dare, he still mainteins his complete irurocence of any w& crnnes: his lauyer Nigel Duncan, has stated that his client c,nnot be extradited until his frtness is no longer in doubt. Cecas will now probably n€ver stand Fial for an)'thing. However, the real controversy surrounds lihe inacrion on th; case from $e early loo0., when <strong>Gecas</strong> could have been put on trial in Scodand Il's argued thar Nrzi collabor.tor..nd war crimes suspects v,ho entered the UK after the Second world War were protected from day one. Afrer t-hey senled. some coniinued to enioy 'special sratui. Anton Cecas is accused ofbeing The time it rook $eJuitjce Mjnister to sigr $e papers allowing <strong>Gecas</strong>t extradition caused protests not just from organisations like th€ Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Israel, which has been hunting Cecas for l6 years, but also from poliricians l.'.ke the SN?\ Lloyd Quinan. During a June debate on the lntemational Criminal Coufl bi passing drcugh the parli.ment, Qoinan went one step irnher and actually caUed Gees a Nazi and murderer in the chanber, saying: "Antanas <strong>Gecas</strong>, who lives in Edinburgh, is a Neziwer diminal and murderer ofJevish and B€lorussian citizens. I ref€r you to Lord Milligant 199? deramacion casejudenenr, when he made h cled tiat he believes ntr G€cas is guiltla" In rhe case Quinan mentioned, <strong>Gecas</strong> had su€d Scottish Television for libel after the company transrnitted two documentries which s€( out to prove Cecas was . w.r criminal. In dismissing <strong>Gecas</strong>\ action, Lord Milligan said: "I Wilson had tearned up widl STVr€porter Bob Tomlinson in the 1980s to collate the facts scattered arouad the rvorld about the <strong>Gecas</strong> case. Their programn€, Crine' of Wtr, told rhe natjon that Scotland and probably England roo am clearly satnfied... he perticip.'ed in many operations involving the kitling of innocent Soviet citizens, includingJe$'s in particular i' Belorussia (now Belans) durins rhe lrst thre€ mon$r of l04l. and in so doing comired war c.imes ag"inst Soviet citizens inchdirg old nen, women and children." In rhe nine years since, many have ask€d why no war crimes case had been brought against <strong>Gecas</strong>. The answer, it seems, is both cornplex BAFIA-winning documentary maker Ross - was hone to Nazi warcr;minals. Dr David Cesarani, professor ofModern Hjsroryat the University ofSouthampton and aurhor of a book abour how Brirain becane a retuge fo. Nazi vrr crimirals, told ne: "I think it's unlikely <strong>Gecas</strong> \ri1l be extradited to Lithuania - he's too old and infirn. Ard this makes you wonder why action 1las not .aken sooner.Ifhe dies in bed an old man, it will be the seal on a pretty appalling record in this country Scodand has no excuse. People rnight breathe a sigh of relief when <strong>Gecas</strong> passes a\r"y bnt the stain will not go {iom Scodand's record. History ivill simply record that the United Kingdom failed to reckon with Nazi collaborators who nade homes in its donain." As the Second World War drew to a bloody close, it would appear Britein did little to prevent known war criminals enterjng the counny. They slipped into the UK among the thousands of genuine Displaced Persons or European Voluntary Worke$ who had come here searching for new lives and new hope. Although dre main drrust of the war effort had been directed against Germany and its alli€s, Churchill's gov€rnment recognis€d from the outset the poteDtial for posFwar trouble hom the Soviet Union. Although theywould never say so publicly, nany old hands in MI6 rcgarded Hitle.'s wer as litde more than an internption in their longer cov€rt fight against Staiin. As a result, MI6 turned a blind eye to war criminels ftom Eastern Europe who turned up in British Displaced Persons camps. They justified dLis by srying that their vehemently anti-Communist stance sometim€s meant being temporarily pro- German oa in dris case, pro Nazi.Itwas avery shalry def€nce, but certainly not the only time th€ s€cret s€reices rould invoke the old "my "lt's unlikely <strong>Gecas</strong> will be extradited - he's lf he dies in bed an old man, it will be the seal on an -^^- i^^ record in this country" Holocaust histo.ian Dr David Cesarani en€my's €n€rny is my liiend" clause. When Hider launched Operation Barbarossa against the Sovies, he was also lauching a buely concealed race war. His targ€tr were Communist partisans, gypsies, social outcasts, political activists, g!ys, the disebled and, ebove all, Je's. 12 too infirm. Th€ invasion began with astounding ferocity on 22 June 1941. A[i€r the tenks had blitzed th€ir v,ay across the landscape, the terror groups know as rhe Einsatzgruppen followed in their wake. These were the fast-moving killing squads that used loc.l "ordinary men", as one author chillingly labelled then, to do dte "cl€ansing" for them. They found many willing acconplices. Several Eastern European countri€s on the edge of the Soviet empire embraced the Gernans: Lithuania, where Antanas Gecevicius rvas born in May 1916, for exampl€, had only just been subje$ed to dle "Red Tenor" and nade a Soviet r€public in 1940. The political sjtuation was h ttrrnoil. Jews, who made up a significant proportion of the Communist party there, were regerded as traitors to the homeland. When th€ Germans marched in and overturned Soviet rule, the Jews were targeted by the invaders via local partisans who were only too willing to bloody their hands. Sir Mertin Gilbert, author of Nex.r Agtilt: A Hinory ofThe Hok.awt, dtplains: "The Gernans undentood the complex make-up of the regions through which they advanced: they knew and exploited the tensions beween tbe local people end theJews. tu a result, they were able ro cali on Lithuanian, Latvian, B€lorussian and
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