Peer calls for probe into Nazi claims

Jack Straw has been asked to look into the claims

The government has been urged to investigate claims that up to 1,500 members of a former Nazi SS unit are living in Britain.

A Labour Party peer has written to Home Secretary Jack Straw asking him to investigate the claim, made in a television documentary.

These are people who were involved in mass killing

Lord Janner

Lord Janner, who is a member of the all-party parliamentary war crimes group, called for any members of Nazi SS units living in Britain to be brought to trial.

He said members of the "killer regiment" should not be allowed "to sleep easy in their beds".

The ITV television documentary claimed that 1,500 members of a Ukraine-based Nazi SS unit arrived in Britain after World War II.

Massacres

Lord Janner said the programme "made it quite clear" that hundreds of the men were involved in "the massacres of Ukrainians, and Poles and Jews".

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "These are people who were involved in mass killing who should never have been allowed in and who should be investigated now."

Lord Janner said that if there was evidence that anyone who came to Britain after the war had been involved in the massacres they needed to be brought to trial.

Lord Janner has asked for an investigation

"What we are saying is that if, but only if, there is sufficient evidence against people who were in that killer regiment that they themselves were involved in the massacres then certainly they should be prosecuted because it is criminal."

Lord Janner said he had also asked Mr Straw to allow the public to see the evidence for themselves.

"Fifty years have now past ... at last there is a right now to see the evidence.

"We know that there were files on these people which have been hidden ever since and they shouldn't be any more."