 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. "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. But in 2007 the Canadian government overturned an earlier decision to revoke Katriuk’s citizenship, due to a lack of evidence. "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.
– 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.