Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, has recently announced that he would change the law to ensure suspected war criminals living in the UK could not escape prosecution, The Daily Telegraph reports.
The amendment aims to enable the prosecution of the overseas war criminals and tortures living in the UK dating back to 1991 go further enough, a committee of MPs and peers tells The Guardian.
As the 1991 cut-off and a requirement that only resident in the UK should face prosecution will leave an “impunity gap” which will allow international war criminals to visit and stay in Britain without fear of prosecution, a report from parliament’s joint human rights committee says to The Guardian.
The possible prosecution of war criminals is limited to those legal residents in Britain. This is based on the grounds that it was neither attractive nor practical to progress further for their trials, says Mr Straw.
The cross-party group of MPs and peers say they “fail to understand the justification” for using 1991 as the cut-off date for prosecution, saying it means that the 1994 Rwandan massacres are covered but not the 1970s Cambodian genocide, Alan Travis write on The Guardian.
MPs and peers urge Straw to adopt a date as far back as possible for each offence, with 1948 for genocide and 1949 for war crimes committed during internal armed conflicts.
Though ministers told the committee the UK did not aim “to become a policeman for the world”, The Daily Telegraph reports.
The committee questioned why ministers had set the cut-off point for genocide and war crimes in internal conflicts, as well as crimes against humanity at 1991, when international law allowed alleged crimes committed in those two categories as far back as 1948 and 1949 to be prosecuted.
The report said that having different cut-off dates was not “an exercise beyond the capacity of the UK government or beyond the understanding of the public”.
The report also called for a specialist war crimes unit to be set up and given “resources commensurate with the seriousness of crimes they need to investigate and the importance of leading the world in bringing international criminals to justice.”
Andrew Dismore, chairman of the parliament's human rights committee, said: “The UK must not be a safe haven for evil. The message to those who have perpetrated the most heinous crime imaginable must be clear: they are not welcome here – not to visit, not to live, not to holiday, shop or get medical treatment.
“The UK should close these loopholes in the law. We also need to re-establish the specialist war crimes unit. Victims of torture must be able to pursue compensation … We should lead the world in bringing international criminals to justice,” The Guardian reports.
The Aegis Trust, which campaigns against genocide, has said there were “significant numbers of suspected war criminals and genocidaires who are either in the UK or have visited this country,” says The Daily Telegraph.
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