Yitzhak Arad - Suspected of War Crimes

Suspected of War Crimes

In June 2007, Lithuania asked Israel to question Arad on suspicions of war crimes. The chief prosecutor of Lithuania suspected that Arad had served in the NKVD and had been involved in executions of Lithuanian civilians and members of the anti-Soviet resistance movement in 1943-1944. Israel refused the request, and called it "nothing short of outrageous". Arad denied involvement, claiming that the allegations are a vendetta for his having painstakingly listed atrocities committed by Lithuanian collaborators. Nevertheless, Lithuanian prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevicius told AFP, based on materials made available by the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Center: "We have many documents, which allow us to think that Arad participated in criminal activities." It should be noted, however, that at that time Arad was 18 years old and, as soon the war ended, emigrated to Palestine. The General Prosecutors office dropped the criminal investigation regarding partisan activities of Arad in September 2008 citing lack of collected evidence as the main cause.

Read more about this topic:  Yitzhak Arad

Famous quotes containing the words suspected of, suspected, war and/or crimes:

    We should omit a main attraction in these books, if we said nothing of their humor. Of this indispensable pledge of sanity, without some leaven of which the abstruse thinker may justly be suspected of mysticism, fanaticism, or insanity, there is a superabundance in Carlyle.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I have always suspected that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is a boon to people who don’t have deep feelings; their pleasure comes from what they know about things, and their pride from showing off what they know. But this only emphasizes the difference between the artist and the scholar.
    Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)

    The dead have been awakened—shall I sleep?
    The world’s at war with tyrants—shall I crouch?
    The harvest’s ripe—and shall I pause to reap?
    I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch;
    Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear,
    Its echo in my heart.
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)

    At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being.
    Simone Weil (1909–1943)