The United States is prepared to investigate US residents' involvement in Nazi crimes, but expects Russia to share information via official channels, US Department of Justice spokesman told Sputnik Peter Carr
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th March, 2020) The United States is prepared to investigate US residents' involvement in Nazi crimes, but expects Russia to share information via official channels, US Department of Justice spokesman told Sputnik Peter Carr.
"The US Department of Justice, Russian authorities and Soviet authorities previously, have cooperated extensively in the Nazi cases for some four decades now," Carr said. "If the Russian authorities suspect involvement in Nazi crimes on the part of any US resident, the US Department of Justice has demonstrated that it takes such allegations very seriously and will investigate as appropriate."
Carr also said that the Russian authorities should use "official government-to-government channels" to share any relevant information during investigations of potential involvement of US residents in Nazi crimes.
On Monday, a report with the Names of 96 veterans of the Latvian Legion - a formation of the Nazi Party's Waffen SS - who are now living in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Argentina and the United Kingdom was presented at a roundtable at the Rossiya Segodnya International news Agency. The report was compiled by Russia's Historical Memory Foundation and the Foundation for Support of Jewish Culture, Traditions, education and Science.
Russian Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko told Sputnik on Tuesday that the Committee will study the biographical data of the Latvian Legion veterans and will check whether they were involved in crimes against Soviet civilians during World War II.
Petrenko said the Committee is already checking the involvement of some persons listed in the report in crimes against humanity as part of the criminal cases of genocide during World War II and the Nazism rehabilitation criminal case against Latvian politician Visvaldis Latsis - a veteran of the Latvian Legion.
Some of the persons mentioned in the report had already been held criminally liable by military tribunals in the 1940s and 1950s, Petrenko noted.
During the Great Patriotic War - as World War II's Eastern Front is called in Russia - the Latvian Legion units committed numerous crimes against humanity in the Soviet Union, including the killing of civilians in the villages of Zhestyanaya Gorka and Chernoye. Last May, the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal case of genocide committed there in the 1941-1943 period.
