The retired British Rail ticket collector, Anthony Sawoniuk (78), was sentenced to life imprisonment on two sample counts of the murder of Jews in German-occupied Belorussia (now Belarus) at the Old Bailey in London yesterday and becomes the first man to be convicted in the United Kingdom of Nazi war crimes.
In a tense conclusion to Britain's first full war crimes trial, Sawoniuk was found guilty on each count based on the "clear evidence" of his part in the liquidation of Jews during the second World War. The eight men and three women of the jury were told during the eight week trial that not only was Sawoniuk prepared to "do the Nazi bidding", but he carried out their genocidal policy "with enthusiasm".
Immediately after the jury returned their second guilty verdict late yesterday afternoon after three days of deliberation, Sawoniuk's solicitor, Mr Martin Lee, said he would be considering an appeal against his conviction. Mr Lee criticised the amount of public money spent on bringing the case against Sawoniuk, who is likely to be the last person convicted in the UK of war crimes, and said retroactive prosecutions under the War Crimes Act 1991 established a "bad precedent".
Sawoniuk, who married his last wife, an Irishwoman called Anastasia in 1958, is expected to serve his sentence at a special prison for elderly prisoners in Portsmouth. Lord Janner, QC, a leading campaigner for human rights and head of the Holocaust Educational Trust, welcomed Sawoniuk's conviction: "This evil man was accorded a fair trial which is more than he gave his victims."
The jury had earlier returned a guilty verdict on the first charge, that of the murder of an unnamed Jewess in Sawoniuk's home-town of Domachevo, Belarus, in September 1942. During the trial, prosecution counsel, Mr John Nutting, QC, told the jury that Sawoniuk was one of the first men to join a civilian police force set up by the Nazis which led "search and kill operations" against the Jews after the German army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.
A few days after the 1941 German invasion of Domachevo the civilian police force was established and shortly afterwards 40 prominent Jews in the town were gathered up and "summarily executed". A second wave of murders of the Jews of Domachevo took place just over a year later on the day of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, on September 20th, 1942. The mass slaughter of 2,900 Jews in the town was described by Mr Nutting as "the attempted eradication of Jewish population of Domachevo".
Five days after the massacre, Sawoniuk murdered the Jewess. Mr Alexander Baglay, who was then 12 years-old, told the court he had witnessed her murder and the murder of two other Jewish men with her. However, because English law does not permit anyone being charged with more than one murder on a single count, both counts of murder against Sawoniuk related to occasions when he was alleged to have murdered a number of Jews. Ten days ago, the judge, Mr Justice Potts, directed the jury to clear Sawoniuk on two other counts of the murder of Jewish men because of a lack of evidence. Mr Baglay, now 67 years-old, told the court that Sawoniuk had driven him to the sandhills near Domachevo, which were being used as a local execution site. The Jewess and the two men were standing on the edge of a sand pit and Sawoniuk ordered the Jewess to undress. "The Jewess did not want to take off her underpants. She was 28 or 29. When she refused he threatened her with a truncheon. When she had undressed, they were lined up and shot. He shot them with his pistol in the back of the head."
Sawoniuk, who denied all the charges, showed no emotion when the first unanimous guilty verdict was read out. By a 10-1 majority Sawoniuk was found guilty on the second charge, relating to the murder of another un-named Jewess.