War Criminals Find Safe Haven in U.K.

Police guarding prime suspect Zvezdan Jovanovic in Courtroom Number One of the Special Court for Trials Against Organized Crime in Belgrade December 22, 2003. Koca Sulejmanovic/AFP/Getty Images

LONDON—Dozens of alleged torturers and former members of military dictatorships around the world are escaping prosecution in the U.K. every year, which rights groups claim has transformed the country into a haven for war criminals.

Some 513 suspected war criminals have been refused immigration status in Britain since 2005, and 51 have been referred to the Metropolitan Police.

However, according to the Aegis Trust, a human rights group, no prosecutions have been made of those suspects—among whom are said to be alleged torturers from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq regime, a figure from Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe, Afghan warlords, and a member of the Sudanese Janjaweed.

“These laws must be enforced,” said Nick Donovan, head of campaigns at the Aegis Trust, in a statement. “If not, Britain will remain a safe haven.

“It’s like white-collar crime such as insider trading in shares,” he added. “You need arrests to prove that the law is a credible deterrent.

“We urge the Home Office to resource these investigations properly and consider resurrecting the specialist war crimes unit at Scotland Yard.”

Among the most controversial cases to be considered are four Rwandans—Vincent Bajinya, Celestin Ugirashebuja, Charles Munyaneza and Emmanuel Nteziryayo—arrested in 2006 in their homes across Britain.

They were suspected of playing key roles in the genocide against Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. All four have denied wrongdoing.

A ruling by the Home secretary for the men to be extradited was thrown out in April 2009 after High Court judges ruled there was “a real risk they would suffer a flagrant denial of justice” if returned to Rwanda.

According to the Aegis Trust statement, that ruling indicated that Britain had become a safe haven for war criminals because “suspects could neither be sent home to face trial nor face prosecution in the U.K. for any offense pre-dating 2001.”
A spokesman for Scotland Yard said that a specialist team was actively considering the evidence.

“The Metropolitan Police Service has a group of officers who are the first point of contact for any allegations of war crimes,“ the spokesman said. ”Information is dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Officers work to secure corroborating evidence available in this country to meet the threshold for a charge to be brought.”