Com­ment: Although there is MUCH more inves­ti­gat­ing to be done, it is inter­est­ing to view the “decon­struc­tion” of Tiger Woods’ pub­lic per­sona in light of the O.J. Simp­son case. (Simp­son’s fol­lies in con­nec­tion with his Las Vegas con­vic­tion notwith­stand­ing, there  is a mon­u­men­tal amount of excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence that received lit­tle or no pub­lic­i­ty. That evi­dence proves  beyond a doubt that Simp­son was framed.) With Tiger Woods achiev­ing wide­spread fame and suc­cess in a field that had pre­vi­ous­ly been a province dom­i­nat­ed by whites, will his decline reflect on the pub­lic’s regard for Barack Oba­ma, who has also excelled in an area pre­vi­ous­ly dom­i­nat­ed by whites?

Woods moth­er-in-law, Bar­bro Holm­berg, has served as Swe­den’s Immi­gra­tion Min­is­ter. With that coun­try hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly served as a haven for Baltic Nazi war crim­i­nals, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Holm­berg may have links with the Under­ground Reich is one to be con­sid­ered. This sub­ject is dis­cussed at greater lengthy in FTR #702. STAY TUNED!

“War Crim­i­nals Shel­ter in Swe­den’s ‘Legal Lim­bo’ ” by Stephen Brown; The Dawn [Pak­istan]; 4/16/2005.

War crim­i­nals and human rights vio­la­tors from Afghanistan, Africa, the Mid­dle East and the Balka­ns find refuge in Swe­den where they are pro­tect­ed from repa­tri­a­tion and nev­er pros­e­cut­ed, offi­cials and activists say. A respect­ed voice on human rights which is quick to denounce abus­es abroad, Swe­den was one of the most vocal Euro­pean Union mem­bers demand­ing in March that Croa­t­ia find war crime sus­pect Ante Gotov­ina before start­ing nego­ti­a­tions to join the EU.

But Swe­den itself has only one police­man inves­ti­gat­ing human rights abusers who have found refuge on its own soil. He reck­ons as many as 1,000 live here, pro­tect­ed from depor­ta­tion by a UN con­ven­tion and with lit­tle risk of being brought to jus­tice.

“If some­one sits down and goes through the immi­gra­tion files he or she will eas­i­ly find sev­er­al hun­dred or maybe a thou­sand poten­tial war crim­i­nals,” detec­tive super­in­ten­dent Hans Olve­bro, the Swedish police’s one-man war crimes unit, told Reuters.

Human rights groups say the sit­u­a­tion under­mines Sweden’s inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion as a pio­neer in asy­lum law and has led to cas­es where vic­tims of tor­ture who have found refuge here have bumped into their tor­men­tors on the streets of Stock­holm.

It con­trasts with the government’s recent refusal to stop the depor­ta­tion of about 150 child asy­lum-seek­ers suf­fer­ing from trau­ma and depres­sion. It argued that bend­ing the rules would only encour­age more such cas­es.

Fri­da Blom of human rights group Swedish Peace called it “real­ly hol­low” for Swe­den to tout itself as a cham­pi­on of the per­se­cut­ed but have one per­son inves­ti­gat­ing war crimes where­as Den­mark has a Spe­cial Inter­na­tion­al Crimes Office with 17 staff. . . . Swe­den has nev­er in mod­ern times put any­one on tri­al for war crimes. It angered Jew­ish Nazi hunters at the Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­tre by refus­ing to inves­ti­gate 100–200 sus­pect­ed Baltic Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors who fled here after World War II.

The coun­try was bound by a 25-year statute of lim­i­ta­tions on all crimes — which it plans to drop soon under a 1998 Rome treaty scrap­ping such lim­i­ta­tions for crimes against human­i­ty.

The Gene­va Con­ven­tion for­bids giv­ing any­one sus­pect­ed of war crimes or crimes against human­i­ty asy­lum, but at the same time Swe­den is a sig­na­to­ry of a UN tor­ture con­ven­tion which out­laws repa­tri­at­ing any­one like­ly to be tor­tured in their home­land.

Like oth­er states, Swe­den gives such peo­ple per­mits to stay, but rights groups say it falls short of EU require­ments that the police and immi­gra­tion depart­ments be equipped to pros­e­cute any war crim­i­nals dis­cov­ered on Euro­pean soil.

Amnesty International’s Carl Soder­bergh said there was a “legal lim­bo” in Swe­den for fugi­tive war crim­i­nals.

Immi­gra­tion Min­is­ter Bar­bro Holm­berg said Olvebro’s esti­mate was “an exag­ger­a­tion” but there was a “small num­ber” of war crim­i­nals in Swe­den “kept under sur­veil­lance all the time”.