Nazi War Crimes Suspect Dies |
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Konrad Kalejs, the Latvian-born Australian who was fighting extradition for alleged Nazi war crimes, has died in a Melbourne nursing home, BBC reports Thursday.
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Konrad Kalejs, the Latvian-born Australian who was fighting extradition for alleged Nazi war crimes, has died in a Melbourne nursing home, BBC reports Thursday.
Mr Kalejs, 88, was charged with war crimes by Latvia in September last year.
The charges related to his role as a commander of the Salaspils labour camp near Riga during World War II.
Mr Kalejs, who denied the charges, appeared briefly in a Melbourne court last month carried on a stretcher, when an appeal hearing against extradition began.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, which hunts perpetrators of the Holocaust, has described Mr Kalejs's death as a sad day for justice.
Efraim Zuroff, head of the centre's Jerusalem office, said: "Konrad Kalejs deserved to die in prison not in an old-age home.
"It was the failure of his homeland, Latvia, and his country of refuge, Australia, that ultimately spared him prosecution."
Prosecutors alleged that while Mr Kalejs was at the Salaspils camp in 1942-43, thousands of Jews and other prisoners were shot, tortured and humiliated.
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