LONDON (AP) - An 84-year-old Nazi war criminal who eluded prosecution for more than 50 years by posing as a Polish patriot has died in prison, British authorities said Monday.
Anthony Sawoniuk, the only person convicted of Nazi war crimes in a British court, died Sunday in Norwich Prison in eastern England, the Home Office said. He had been sentenced to two life terms. He had been suffering from a terminal illness and police said his death was not being treated as suspicious.
During his war crimes trial in 1999, Sawoniuk was accused of killing 18 Jews while serving in the Nazi-backed police force in his hometown of Domachevo, Belarus, in 1942, including 15 Jewish women who he forced to strip and face an open grave before he shot them.
Sawoniuk later served with the Waffen SS, but when he saw the Germans were losing the war he changed sides, joining the Polish army and fighting with the allies. Posing as a Polish patriot, he emigrated in 1946 to Britain, where he worked as a railway collector. His past was uncovered after a letter to his brother in Poland was intercepted by the KGB in 1951.
He was not pursued until KGB files were transferred to Britain after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then it took police, historians and linguists months to track him down. Sawoniuk was convicted of two charges of murder. John Nutting, the prosecutor who tried the case, said Sawoniuk was ``not only prepared to do the Nazi's bidding, but carried out their genocidal policy with enthusiasm.'' |