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   ||||| MONTREAL—The Russian Embassy in Ottawa ripped into the federal government Thursday after news emerged that a longtime Canadian resident who was No. 2 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most wanted Nazi war criminals had died. 
   
   Vladimir Katriuk’s lawyer said his client had been ill for a long time before his recent death at the age of 93. 
   
   “I think it was last Friday,” Orest Rudzik said from Oakville, Ont. “It was a stroke or something do with a stroke.” 
   
   Katriuk, a native of Ukraine who had been an avid beekeeper for years in Ormstown, Que., was at the heart of allegations he participated in a village massacre in 1943 in what is now known as Belarus. 
   
   An official with the Russian Embassy said Katriuk’s death makes it impossible, “unfortunately,” for him to face justice. 
   
   “Sadly, the Canadian government ignored numerous appeals by Canadian Jewish organizations and efforts by the Russian authorities to ensure that justice be served, allowing Vladimir Katriuk to retain citizenship of Canada while peacefully residing in this country,” press secretary Kirill Kalinin said in an email sent to The Canadian Press. 
   
   “Employing legal or politically motivated loopholes to evade from trying or extraditing Nazi war criminals is totally unacceptable.” 
   
   Russia’s intervention in Ukraine has led to Canada all but severing relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as imposing a slew of sanctions against individuals and entities in both countries. 
   
   The Federal Court ruled in 1999 that Katriuk lied about his voluntary service for German authorities during the war in order to obtain Canadian citizenship. 
   
   The court concluded Katriuk had been a member of a Ukrainian battalion implicated in numerous atrocities in Ukraine — including the deaths of thousands of Jews in Byelorussia between 1941 and 1944. 
   
   But in 2007 the Canadian government overturned an earlier decision to revoke Katriuk’s citizenship, due to a lack of evidence. 
   
   A study three years ago alleged Katriuk was a key participant in a massacre in Khatyn during the Second World War. 
   
   The article said a man with Katriuk’s name lay in wait in March 1943 outside a barn that had been set ablaze, operating a machine-gun and firing on civilians as they tried to flee the burning building. 
   
   The same document said the man took a watch, bracelet and gun from the body of a woman found nearby. 
   
   “One witness stated that Volodymyr Katriuk was a particularly active participant in the atrocity: he reportedly lay behind the stationary machine-gun, firing rounds on anyone attempting to escape the flames,” said the article, authored by Lund University historian Per Anders Rudling. 
   
   Rudling, whose research was published in the spring 2012 issue of Holocaust Genocide Studies, attributed these details to KGB interrogations released for the first time in 2008. 
   
   News of Katriuk’s death emerged just several hours after the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said Ottawa should take the necessary steps to ensure he be held accountable if he were found guilty of war crimes committed in collaboration with the Nazis.A spokesman for the centre had nothing to add when informed of Katriuk’s death. 
   
   Asked to comment on the death, a spokeswoman for Federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay said in an email that war criminals are not welcome in Canada. 
   
   “Those who have been involved in war crimes will find no haven in Canada — they will be located and they will face the consequences,” said Mary Ann Dewey-Plante, MacKay’s communications director. 
   
   In a 2012 interview with The Canadian Press, Katriuk repeatedly refused to discuss anything about himself — other than his passion for honey bees. 
   
   “I have nothing to say,” he said at the time of the accusations. 
   
   “When we talk about bees, that’s different. When we talk about my own affairs, that’s something else. I’m sorry.” 
   
   Asked how he felt about having his name on the list of worst surviving Nazis (he was No. 4 on the most-wanted list in 2012), Katriuk paused. He reached into a box and pulled out a piece of a beehive: “You see?” he said. “Here they have started to make the royal cell (for a queen bee).” 
   
   Pressed further about the allegations, he replied: “Let people talk.” 
   
   Rudzik, who was Katriuk’s lawyer for more than 30 years, said his client had lived through some hard times. 
   
   “He would get calls in the middle of the night from nasty people,” he said. 
   
   “He was ailing, he had heart problems . . . and he would call me and I would basically do a hand-holding exercise, you know, tell him, ‘Not to worry, nothing in it, we’ve been through all this, been there, done that, so please, please relax.’ ” ||||| The second most wanted man on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s list of Nazi war criminals has died at 93 after a long illness, his lawyer has said. 
   
   News of Vladimir Katriuk’s death emerged several hours after the Canadian Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said Ottawa should take the necessary steps to ensure he be held accountable if he were found guilty of war crimes. 
   
   Russia charged Katriuk with genocide this month in connection with the 1943 killing of civilians in Khatyn, now part of Belarus. According to war reports, Katriuk was a member of a Ukrainian battalion of the SS, the elite Nazi storm troops, between 1942 and 1944. He had denied the accusations against him. 
   
   The Russian embassy in Ottawa called on the Canadian government a few weeks ago to support a criminal case against Katriuk. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, a law enforcement body that reports only to President Vladimir Putin, called on Canada to deliver Katriuk to Moscow so he could be tried for alleged war crimes. 
   
   Canada ignored the request and said it would never recognise Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its interference in Ukraine. 
   
   A study three years ago alleged Katriuk was a key participant in a village massacre during the second world war. A man with Katriuk’s name lay in wait in March 1943 outside a barn that had been set ablaze, operating a machine-gun and firing on civilians as they tried to flee the burning building, it said. 
   
   “One witness stated that Katriuk was a particularly active participant in the atrocity: he reportedly lay behind the stationary machine-gun, firing rounds on anyone attempting to escape the flames,” the study by Lund University historian Per Anders Rudling says. 
   
   Rudling, whose research was published in spring 2012 issue of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, attributed these details to KGB interrogations released for the first time in 2008. 
   
   Katriuk allegedly deserted his SS unit when it moved to France from eastern Europe in 1944. He lived in Paris before moving to Canada in 1951, according to court documents. He later became a Canadian citizen and lived with his French-born wife in Ontario, working as a beekeeper. 
   
   In 1999, Canada’s federal court ruled Katriuk obtained Canadian citizenship under false pretences, by not telling authorities about his collaboration with the Nazis, but could find no evidence he committed atrocities. In 2007, the Harper cabinet decided not to revoke his citizenship. ||||| BERLIN (AP) — German prosecutors say they've shelved their investigation of a 93-year-old former SS officer suspected of being part of a wartime massacre of civilians in Italy because he's no longer fit to stand trial. 
   
   Hamburg prosecutors said Thursday that there was a "high probability" that Gerhard Sommer could have been charged with involvement in 342 murders for participating in the Aug. 12, 1944 slaughter in Sant' Anna di Stazzema, but that he was suffering from dementia and couldn't follow a trial. 
   
   Sommer and others had already been found guilty in 2005 by an Italian military court and sentenced to life in prison in absentia. 
   
   But he was never extradited because he would have had to consent to it under German law. Hamburg opened its own investigation last year. ||||| Alleged Nazi war criminal Vladimir Katriuk, a beekeeper of Ukrainian ancestry who lived in Quebec for more than 60 years, has died just as Moscow was preparing a criminal case against him in an effort to embarrass Canada. 
   
   Mr. Katriuk, 93, died last week, his lawyer said. He most recently lived south of Montreal near the U.S. border where he raised bees. 
   
   "Mr. Katriuk has passed away, after years of unwarranted harassment, media not excepted," Orest Rudzik told The Globe and Mail. Mr. Rudzik served as legal counsel to Mr. Katriuk over the years. 
   
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   "I'm glad he's at peace. He'd been ailing for a long time." 
   
   Relations between Vladimir Putin's Russian government and Canada are frosty today over Ottawa's strong and vocal opposition to Moscow's aggression in Ukraine. Canada has suspended all but low-level diplomatic relations with Russia and Moscow's leadership has told Prime Minister Stephen Harper to butt out of Ukraine, the ancestral homeland of more than one million Canadians. 
   
   Mr. Katriuk was set to become a pawn in Canada-Russia relations. On May 8, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, a law-enforcement body that reports only to Mr. Putin, called on Canada to deliver Mr. Katriuk to Moscow so he can be tried for alleged war crimes. 
   
   The Harper government responded by ignoring the request and saying it will never recognize Moscow's annexation of Crimea and its interference in Ukraine. 
   
   Jewish groups have long urged the deportation of Mr. Katriuk, a former member of a Ukrainian battalion of the Waffen SS, the elite Nazi troops, and they increased their demands for action in recent years after new scholarly research that appears to tie Mr. Katriuk to a 1943 massacre of villagers in Belarus, a former Soviet republic. 
   
   In 1999, the Federal Court ruled that Mr. Katriuk obtained Canadian citizenship under false pretenses by not telling authorities about his collaboration with the Nazis but could find no evidence he committed atrocities. In 2007, the Harper cabinet decided not to revoke his citizenship. 
   
   Mr. Katriuk has said he was forced to join the SS battalion and did not participate in operations with the Germans. He said that while in Belarus, he guarded villagers, livestock and resources from other partisan forces. 
   
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   Mr. Rudzik said his former client was the victim of unfair persecution. 
   
   Moscow's new demand had threatened to reignite frictions between Canada's Jewish and Ukrainian communities over Mr. Katriuk. 
   
   Earlier Thursday, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, which did not know of Mr. Katriuk's death, urged Ottawa to take action on the Nazi collaborator. 
   
   "There have been recent reports that the Russian Federation has requested that Canada extradite Vladimir Katriuk, a Quebec resident originally from Ukraine, to be tried for war crimes he allegedly committed while serving in the Waffen SS during the Second World War," Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said. 
   
   "While we are supportive of Canada's position on the integrity of Ukraine and the need to oppose challenges to Ukraine's sovereignty, this must be separated out from the imperative to ensure justice is served with respect to Nazi atrocities perpetrated against Jews and others during WWII. We call on the Government of Canada to review this case and take the necessary steps to ensure that, if guilty, Katriuk be held accountable for war crimes committed in collaboration with the Nazi regime." 
   
   The Ukrainian Canadian Congress, a lobby group with significant influence in the Prime Minister's Office, has urged Ottawa to ignore Russia's demands. 
   
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   In a statement provided to The Globe and Mail earlier this month, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) called for Mr. Katriuk to be left alone. 
   
   "The Federal Court of Canada in 1999 found no evidence that Mr. Katriuk participated in war crimes or atrocities against the civilian population" during the Second World War," UCC executive director Taras Zalusky said in a statement. 
   
   "Canada's cabinet refused to strip Mr. Katriuk of Canadian citizenship for those same reasons," he said. 
   
   Mr. Zalusky called Moscow's investigation "an obvious attempt to distract attention away from Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, invasion of and war against Ukraine, and sow discord among ethnic communities in Canada." 
   
   In 2012, the Harper government pledged to re-examine the Katriuk case but nothing came of it.
target: – There were two men at the top of this year's Simon Wiesenthal Center most-wanted Nazi war criminal list—and there is now no chance either one will face a court. No. 2 on the list, Ukrainian-born Vladimir Katriuk, has died in Quebec at the age of 93, the Toronto Star reports. Katriuk, who moved to Canada in 1951 and worked as a beekeeper for more than 50 years, was accused of being a "particularly active participant" in a massacre in what is now Belarus in 1943, when he was a member of an SS battalion that allegedly carried out many atrocities, the Guardian reports. Russia charged Katriuk with genocide last month, but Canadian authorities refused a request to send him to Moscow, citing Russia's actions in Ukraine, reports the Globe and Mail. Katriuk had long been under suspicion, but the wheels of justice did not move quickly: In 1999, Canadian authorities concluded he had entered the country under false pretenses, but in 2007 a decision to cancel his citizenship was overturned due to lack of evidence, the Star reports. The man at the top of the most-wanted list is also 93 years old. Gerhard Sommer is still alive in a Hamburg-area nursing home, but German prosecutors say they've dropped their investigation because he suffers from dementia and isn't fit to stand trial, the AP reports. In 2005, he was one of 10 former SS officers an Italian court found guilty of taking part in a massacre of 560 civilians in 1944, but German law didn't permit his extradition.