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Poland wants to extradite suspected WWII criminal

PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek 04.07.2017 13:07
Poland’s State Prosecutor's Office has requested the extradition from the US of a 98-year-old Ukrainian suspected of committing crimes against humanity during World War II.
National Institute of Remembrance headquarters in Warsaw. Photo: Adrian Grycuk/Wikimedia Commons. (CC BY-SA 3.0 pl)National Institute of Remembrance headquarters in Warsaw. Photo: Adrian Grycuk/Wikimedia Commons. (CC BY-SA 3.0 pl)

The prosecutor’s office said that on 23 July 1944, Michael K. (surname withheld under Polish privacy laws) collaborated with the German Nazis and led a Ukrainian campaign in the murder of 44 people and burning of three villages in what is now southeastern Poland.

Michael K. emigrated to the US in the 1950s.

The man is being investigated by the National Institute of Remembrance, which is charged with prosecuting crimes against the Polish state.

According to Poland’s Do Rzeczy website, Michael K also took part in suppressing the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and in 1945 joined Germany’s 14th Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS, a 15,000-strong unit of mostly ethnic-Ukrainians.

The National Institute of Remembrance announced on Tuesday that it issued the extradition request two weeks ago.

One of its prosecutors said in March that Michael K.’s age “does not prevent us from proceeding with a trial”.

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