Belarus negotiating with Latin American countries to secure extradition of Nazi criminals - prosecutor general

MINSK. March 15 (Interfax) - Belarusian law enforcement agencies are negotiating with Latin American countries to secure the turnover of Nazis who committed war crimes during WWII, Belarusian Prosecutor General Andrei Shved said.

"We had information regarding 400 SS men who are still alive. Those are chiefly Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians. Most of them are hiding in Latin America and Canada. It's clear that Canada won't turn them over. Those living descendants marching in Riga and Vilnius - nobody would turn them over, either. But we're working with Argentina and other states," the Belarusian Prosecutor General's Office quoted Shved as saying in Minsk on Wednesday.

To investigate war crimes, Belarus is also collaborating actively with Russia, which has shared a number of military documents concerning punitive operations by the Nazis in Belarusian territory during WWII, he said.

"We've learned about dozens of earlier unknown locations of mass extermination of people. We've learned about punitive operations that had been unknown before. For instance, literally a month ago, I received a report about a translated document concerning a punitive operation codenamed Ape in the Cage, which hadn't been mentioned anywhere before. The Vitebsk region, the end of 1943, and it follows from Wehrmacht documents that they annihilated dozens of populated areas and, as they write themselves, [killed] at least 14,000 partisans, that is, peaceful civilians. And none of our documents contain information on this punitive operation," he said.