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Subject: Ukrainian nazi accused of war crimes during World War II
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 00:01:42 GMT
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Former Ukrainian policeman accused of war crimes during World War II
(The Simon Wiesenthal Center)

Bogdan Koziy has been living in comfortable surroundings outside
Alajuela, Costa Rica since fleeing to that Central American country
from the United States with his wife in 1984, eluding deportation to
the-then Soviet Union on charges which included shooting dead a four
year-old Jewish girl.

The director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Israeli office, Efraim
Zuroff, visited Costa Rica in February 1996 to campaign for the
expulsion of Koziy. Zuroff said Costa Rican officials had told him that
Koziy, now 73 years old, could be expelled only if another country
requested his extradition, or if Costa Rica declared him an undesirable
alien. Zuroff said he intended to press for the latter. "Declaring him
undesirable is an option entirely in the control of the Costa Rican
government," he said.

Koziy, who allegedly helped round up Jews to send to the gas chamber,
has lived without fear of expulsion since a Costa Rican court turned
down a request for his extradition from the former Soviet Union in 1986.

Koziy fled the United States in 1984 before U.S. authorities could
serve an order to deport him to the Soviet Union. The order was issued
after a U.S. court upheld a 1979 lower court ruling stripping him of
U.S. citizenship, which he obtained in 1956.

In March 1986, the Soviet Union submitted a request for the extradition
of Koziy. The request was rejected by a Costa Rica court because it was
not in accordance with Costa Rican law which stipulates that the
criminal has to already be on trial in the country requesting
extradition. In March 1987, Costa Rica's Superior Penal Court ordered
Koziy's extradition to the Soviet Union on the condition that he not be
executed for his crime. But a judge cancelled the extradition order in
June 1987 and, in September of that year, Minister of the Interior
Ronaldo Ramirez granted Koziy a temporary visa allowing him to remain
in Costa Rica.

A letter-writing campaign for Koziy's expulsion, begun by the World
Jewish Congress in 1994, included letters from many U.S. congressmen to
Costa Rican officials. But President Jose Maria Figueres and Foreign
Minister Fernando Naranjo have said that Costa Rica will not
unilaterally expel Koziy.

Zuroff has said that he got the feeling, after three days of meetings
with Costa Rican officials, that the government would prefer to receive
an extradition request from another country rather than
unilaterally "throwing him out." However, Zuroff believes that getting
Costa Rica to expel Koziy will be "more easily 'doable,'" than getting
Ukraine to request his extradition.

Ukraine authorities say they have volumes of evidence linking Koziy to
war crimes during the Nazi era. As a Ukrainian policeman in Lysets, he
served under the Nazis, and "took part in shooting civilians and rose
through the ranks to become a senior officer," said Viktor Popov, who
heads the investigation into Koziy's case.

The accusations include shooting to death 13 year-old Lucia Roziner in
the autumn of 1942 after he discovered her hiding in a barn. A year
later, he allegedly attacked four year-old Monica Singer, the daughter
of the local Jewish doctor, dragged her off by the hair, and shot her.
In addition, he allegedly participated in the murders of a teenage
daughter of the Rosiner family, an unnamed boy living in Stary Lysiec,
and seven members of the Kandler family. He is also accused of helping
the Gestapo round up Jewish families to be sent to the ghetto in
Stanislaw six miles away.

The commander of the Lysets police unit, tried and executed in 1952,
named Koziy as one of his men. The case against him was suspended , but
never dropped, only because Koziy became so hard to track down. Also,
relations between the Soviet Union and the U.S. and, later, the efforts
of Ukrainian nationalists to discount the charges against Koziy , have
made him an elusive target.



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