The legal opinion, a copy of which has been obtained by the Review, contradicts claims by the Federal Government that suspected Nazi war criminals in Australia could not be deported because of legal "loopholes" that prevented the stripping of their citizenship.

News of the report has prompted strong calls for the deportation and the stripping of citizenship of war criminals from Jewish Community leaders, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, as well as Robert Greenwood QC, the first Director of the Government’s Special Investigations Unit into Nazi war criminals.

The Government claims that convicted Nazi war criminal Konrad Kalejs cannot be stripped of his Australian citizenship or deported from Australia even though his citizenship was granted under false pretences, because of a ten year statute of limitations on the revocation of Australian nationality.

However, an opinion prepared in 1990 by the Commonwealth DPP argues that suspected Nazi war criminals who obtained citizenship in Australia between January 1949 and October 1958 could still be legally stripped of their citizenship and deported at the Minister’s discretion. The opinion argues that under Section 21 of the Nationality & Citizenship Act 1948, individuals who were naturalised "by means of fraud, false representation or the concealment of some material circumstances" or "who were not at the date on which he was registered or naturalised of good character" could be deprived of their citizenship.

Even though the Nationality & Citizenship Act was repealed in 1958, the opinion argues that under Section 8 of the Acts Interpretation Act the relevant section still remains valid and enforceable today.

The consequence, according to the report, is that " the current statutory scheme which deals with the deprivation of citizenship would have no application to a person who became a registered or naturalised citizen between 26 January 1949 and 8 October 1958". According to the DPP’s advice, individuals who acquired citizenship between 1949 and 1958 without disclosing relevant information or who can be considered not of good character are subject to the Nationality and Citizenship Act provisions of 1948, which contain much broader provisions and powers than current legislation. It also means that no ten-year limitation rules would apply.

The opinion suggests that Mr Ivan Polyukhovich, a suspected Nazi war criminal who was acquitted at trial in 1993, could have been deprived of his citizenship because he was naturalised on 28 May 1958 while the Act was not repealed until 8 October 1958. Konrad Kalejs, who has been found guilty of war crimes in courts in the United States and Canada, was naturalised in Victoria in 1957.

Karlis Ozols, a senior officer in the same command as Kalejs, who, the Review revealed last month, was the subject of a fourth investigation by the Government before the case was suddenly closed down, was naturalised in Australia in 1956. Both men could be subject to immediate loss of citizenship and deportation under the terms of the opinion by the DPP’s Office.

"It’s always difficult, but if this opinion is correct in law then one would not need retrospective legislation. One could simply invoke the provisions of the 1948 Act, treat them as not having been repealed insofar as one is dealing with Karlis Ozols and Konrad Kalejs and proceed to deprive them of their citizenship and deport them under the 1948 Act, which is the Act by which they obtained citizenship under false pretences." "Insofar as the act was applicable to those persons that were caught by it it appears that you would be able to invoke those provisions because they had not been relevantly repealed," he said.

Robert Greenwood QC, the former director of the SIU War Crimes Unit, recalled that the Government and DPP’s office had prepared the option for the stripping of citizenship when he was Director of the SIU. According to Greenwood, at the time it was decided to pursue trials rather than deportation, because of the nature of the Soviet Union, but today the circumstances have changed fundamentally.

"As time has gone forward since 1987 and the whole structure of the Soviet Union changed and nature of the problem that we were faced with changed as we defined it and redefined it, then other options should have been looked at. The Government should move immediately to strip Nazi war criminals of their citizenship as well as utilise this option of deportation," Greenwood said.

A spokesman for the Minister for Immigration confirmed to the Review this week that it was the view of the Government that if the individual had failed to fully disclose pertinent information or fraudulently misrepresented details in his naturalisation application more than 10 years ago, nothing could be done. "The problem is you are talking about a 10-year window which closed some 30 years ago. It is a matter of fact that the law in place at the time means that the ten year window closed 30 years ago." Asked about the contradicting advice prepared by the DPP’s office, the spokesman said that neither the Minister nor the Department of Immigration had been aware of it until now. Jewish community leaders this week expressed concern that the Government appears to have either ignored or not been aware of the existence of this option.

" I have been saying all along that surely there must have been an option to do something, but there hasn’t been any political will to do it," Diane Shteinman, President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told the Review.

"I’m sure if there was anybody who wanted to look hard enough for this report they could have found it, but there is nobody who really seems to care enough. There has been so much buckpassing over this issue, I would hope that the Government would seriously look at this report. It’s become a blot on Australia’s international reputation and standing that it is seen as a haven for Nazis.

"It was a shameful episode in Australian history that these people were so freely allowed into Australia and you would think that there would be more of a desire to redress that," Shteinman said.

Dr Colin Rubenstein, Policy Chairman of the Australia/ Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, also called on the Government this week to explain why the DPP option had not been utilised.

"For years the Government has argued that it was not possible to strip Australian citizens of their nationality, even if they had been Nazi war criminals, because of legal loopholes which limit such action to only 10 years," he said.

"But now you have the DPP’s office arguing that not only can you do it, but it could have been done all along. There now appears no need to introduce either new legislation and there are no longer issues of retrospectivity to contend with.

" The whole issue raises very disturbing questions as to why the Government has so adamantly refused to take action until now, especially when it is common practise in the US and deportation is now successfully utilised in Canada. If in the past it has been through a lack of awareness of this option then that excuse is no longer valid and an immediate response is now necessary," he said.

Only last month, Jeremy Jones, Executive Vice President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), gave evidence before the Joint Standing Committee on Migration. Jones called for an end to the 10-year limitation rule arguing that as early as 1986 the ECAJ had "submitted to the Menzies Review that the only way this country could sensibly deal with the issue was to change the 10-year limit so people could have their citizenship taken away if those people had been found by a tribunal to judged to have committed crimes against humanity."

Until now, such action has not been possible in Australia because of the 10-year limitation rule. However, the option spelt out in the DPP’s advice appears to enable a circumvention of that limitation and allow the deportation and deprivation of citizenship of individuals who have committed mass murder and other crimes against humanity.

In a related development last week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem submitted a list of 64 Latvians believed to have been involved in war crimes during World War II to the Australian ambassador in Tel Aviv, Ian Wilcock.

The director of the Center, Efraim Zuroff, called on the Australian Government to investigate the suspects on the list who are alleged to have "participated in the persecution and /or murder of thousands of Jews in Latvia and Byelorussia during World War II and who subsequently immigrated to Australia" Zuroff, who together with the chairmen of the Israeli Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews and the Association of Lithuanian Jews delivered the list to the Australian ambassador, said that Australia is currently "the ideal haven for Nazi war criminals and this will continue to be the case until the Australian Government makes a concerted effort to take legal action against Holocaust perpetrators residing all over the country."

The list presented to Ambassador Wilcock contains suspects who are believed to have served in the same Latvian SD as Konrad Kalejs and Karlis Ozols. Some hold senior ranks and almost all arrived in Australia between 1949 and 1950.

Interviewed by ABC TV’s Four Corners, David Schramm, International Director of the Australian Federal Police, admitted that the AFP had not been aware of key evidence acquired by Scotland Yard that linked Kalejs to the massacres committed by the Arajs Kommando unit.

The videotaped interview of Lt Harold Svikeris, a fellow officer in the unit, shows Svikeris repeatedly claiming that Kalejs had taken part in massacres of civilians.

"It may well have been valuable evidence but we weren’t aware of it," said Schramm, who also admitted that "we do not have people working full time on war crimes matters.. The investigation of War Crimes is not the only thing the AFP does".

Asked whether the AFP has conducted any further investigation into Kalejs between 1993 and 1997 Schramm responded, "No".

Robert Greenwood QC explained that the investigation of war criminals, including contemporary ones from Bosnia, Cambodia and Afghanistan, required detailed historical, language, military and investigative expertise rather than ordinary police investigations.

"It was an expertise that took us [the War Crimes Unit] a significant period of time to build up. In wiping out that unit, of course the expertise dissipated."