The material contained in this blog does not appear in my newly published book – Nazis in Australia – The Special Investigations Unit. 1987-1994. John has contributed a chapter for the book. This blog highlights John’s impressive contribution to the work of the SIU and later to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
On his arrival at the SIU John Ralston, a former NSW Homicide Squad police investigator, was teamed up with Bill Beale, an ex-Australian Federal Police (AFP) Detective and Keith Innes who previously had a career in the Australian armed forces and later as a criminal intelligence analyst with the AFP. (See my separate blog relating to Bill Beal’s recollections of working at the SIU, in which Bill provides some amusing background to Keith Innes’s unique character.)
John and Bill’s team was tasked with investigating alleged war crimes committed by people living in Australia, who, at the time of World War II resided in Lithuania. Bill had been working on these cases for some time and took the lead, although he handed over responsibility for cases involving the 12th Lithuanian Police (Schutzmannshaft) Battalion to John. Keith Innes supported both of them as the team’s analyst.
The team’s initial investigations took place prior to the collapse of the former Soviet Union. On 1 December 1989 three SIU teams flew from London to Moscow. From there the teams split up and travelled to Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine. John’s team flew to Lithuania for their first interview mission there. They were accompanied by their interpreter Victor Sliterus, a former Lithuanian who came to Australia as a teenager after the second world war.
John recalls the weather in Moscow was bad with fog, wind, snow and ice. The flight to Vilnius was delayed departing Moscow and although it was only to be an hour flight, the team members were still in the air three hours later. Every now and then the aircraft would drop down below the clouds and it appeared the pilot was following the railway line between Moscow and Vilnius. Finally, they landed at a little used airport at Kaunas instead of Vilnius. This was their first flight with Aeroflot and it did not inspire John and Victor with confidence in that airline.
When this first visit to Lithuania wrapped up, the team caught a train back to Moscow. They weren’t prepared to risk Aeroflot again and potentially miss their British Airways flight out of Russia. The SIU team that travelled to Rovno at the same time, had a similar experience.
On arrival in Moscow, an Australian Embassy driver dropped Victor Sliterus and John at a suburb where they had arranged to meet a potential witness. Victor dismissed the driver, confident he could get them back to the Oktoberskaya Hotel for their rendezvous with the other teams and transport to the airport. This proved to be a miscalculation. After speaking to the witness, John and Victor could not hire a taxi for their return to their hotel, nor could they work out which underground Metro station to go to. Ultimately, they went back to the witness they had spoken to and he put them on the right train. Although this was a highly tense situation, they did get to observe the magnificent Russian underground Metro system. At that time, it seemed to John that nothing appeared to function properly in this country, but the underground did. Each station was extensively decorated with ceramic tiles, artwork and sculptures that John found amazing, truly impressive in their own right.
John and Victor emerged from the underground in central Moscow. Although they could find a taxi, what they didn’t know was there were two Oktoberskaya Hotels, a public one and a discrete unlisted one used to accommodate visiting regional communist party officials. The Australian Embassy had arranged for the SIU teams to stay at this latter hotel, so it took some finding. They managed to get there eventually, just as the other SIU members were about to travel to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport. Relieved, John and Victor joined them. After much fuss everyone boarded the BA flight to London. It was delayed by about six hours, but no one was getting off that plane. They were all happy to be leaving the Soviet Union.
John was to visit Lithuania on a further two occasions. Unfortunately, although his team was able to gather much evidence to establish the alleged crimes had taken place, they found little evidence to connect the alleged perpetrators, now living in Australia, with those crimes.
About twelve months later, in November 1990, John accompanied Bill Beale and Julie Laycock, who replaced Keith Innes as the team’s analyst, when they flew to Poland. There Bill continued with his Lithuanian cases, particularly in relation to executions at Panerai. The team was joined by a German Historian, Dr Ruth Birn, and they all flew from there to Kiev (Kyiv) the capital of Ukraine, followed by a twelve-hour overnight train journey to Kirovograd (some 300 kilometres from Kyiv). The main purpose of this mission was to conduct investigations relating to the SIU suspect Heinrich Wagner who was involved in the execution of the Jews from the village of Izraylovka in June 1942. John said later that the train trip was tedious to say the least. Outside the temperatures were near zero or sub-zero.
The team arrived in Kirovograd early in the morning of 9 November 1990. They were packed into a van and delivered to the Hotel Dobrudja, which was to be their base for the next few weeks. The Hotel was located inside a fenced off area of several acres. Stopped by a locked gate they had to walk one or two hundred metres through the trees to the hotel. As they approached, they were met by Procurators Baklan and Komendyak. Coming out of a fog they were an imposing sight. Looking like stereotypical KGB operatives, dressed in long leather coats and small brimmed felt hats they came out to greet the SIU team. Despite their foreboding appearance they were very friendly and took John and his colleagues through the formalities of checking in. They left them to breakfast and settle in, coming back later to collect them for a formal meeting to discuss the SIU’s investigation and the work they proposed to do in the coming weeks.
John had sent them a list of over 20 people who the team wanted to interview. As John started going through the list it was clear none had been arranged in accordance with the SIU’s official cable request.
After about five such responses Bill suggested to John that they should go no further as it was obvious no work had been done by the Soviet Procurators to arrange any witnesses for interview. John insisted on going through the list of every witness to drive home the point he was serious and was insisting on cooperation. By the end of the process the procurators were visibly uncomfortable having run out of the lame excuses they had offered up initially.
There was also unease about cooperation with the team’s historian, Ruth Birn. It seems she was the first German to visit the area since World War II. Ruth was a professional historian and overcame those concerns. During her archival research, while the team was interviewing witnesses, she gained considerable cooperation, including access to documents marked top-secret, mainly because they were in the German language and no one locally could understand them.
In spite of the rough start, the team managed to interview several useful witnesses and the case against Heinrich Wagner continued to build.
John recalls there were several interesting moments during the visit to Kirovograd. One Sunday afternoon, the team members were sitting around in Bill’s hotel room, discussing their work. One of them commented it was surprising Procurator Komendyak (who by then identified as an alcoholic) did not turn up for a drink. About an hour later he turned up and pulled a couple of bottles of Vodka from his briefcase. On another occasion, again in Bill’s room, the team discussed the need to exchange US dollars for Russian roubles. The next morning without request, en-route to the Procurators Office, Komendyak took them via a Bank where the team members were able to exchange money. The obvious conclusion was, unsurprisingly, their hotel rooms had been bugged.
The site of the mass grave in Ustinovka in the Henrich Wagner investigation – John Ralston second from left in white shirt and black cap. SIU interpreter Mira Grinberg in the yellow blouse.
The Soviet helicopter supplied by the Soviets to enable the SIU team to take aerial photographs of the Ustinovka mass grave site in the investigation involving Henrich Wagner – as described in Nazis in Australia – The Special Investigations Unit. 1987-1994.
John (crouching in the second row – in the white shirt and tie) next to SIU interpreter Mira Grinberg with members of the soviet army, who assisted in the mass grave exhumation in the case involving Henrich Wagner. Stas Kostetsky – the local Ukrainian interpreter from Rovno, in the black shirt and orange cap, is standing in the back row.
During this mission SIU Head, Bob Greenwood QC and Paul Coghlan, the Deputy Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, made a lightening visit to Kirovograd for the purpose of meeting with Ivan Zhilun, the main witness able to testify against Wagner, to satisfy themselves they could build a prosecution case around his evidence. They were convinced they could.
Greenwood was also accompanied by one of the SIU Russian/English interpreters, Ludmila Stern. This was the first time John had worked with her. Up until this point he viewed the experience of being in communist USSR through a very narrow lens. He found the Ukrainian people warm and engaging but all the time he compared the local environment unfavourably to Australia. John recalls standing next to Ludmila in Berezovatka on the cold desolate afternoon when Zhilun had pointed out the location of the mass grave site relating to the Wagner investigation. John was thinking how bleak it was. Ludmila on the other hand was so excited at being in quintessential Ukraine, with fields, chickens and farmers going about their business in their carts. After that visit John took the time to appreciate the differences between his home country and rural Ukraine. John said ultimately this made him more professional in his work.
John also recalls that Ludmila and her SIU colleagues Mira Grinberg and Irene Ulman were Australian citizens previously from the Soviet Union. They were professional interpreters, native Russian speakers as well as being thoroughly proficient in English. All three were outstanding to work with, John says. I totally agree with him. Not only were they excellent interpreters, they assisted the SIU teams in every aspect of their investigative work in the former Soviet Union and in understanding and appreciating the culture and life in Ukraine and the USSR. Other SIU interpreters working with the other Unit’s teams were similarly impressive.
John recalls an important piece of evidence, linking Wagner as the person alleged to have been involved in the executions at Izraylovka, was Wagner’s immigration file. His photograph was obtained by the SIU from the file and was used in photo-arrays, or photoboards, which were shown to witnesses, some of whom were able to identify Wagner from the photographs.
Wagner came to Australia under the name Andrej Woijtenko, born 9 January 1922 from Poland. The name Henrich Wagner appeared on the file but had been crossed out. In explaining his name change, when interviewed later by John, Wagner claimed the immigration officer who interviewed him and completed the documentation, advised him to change his name. The reason offered by Wagner was Australia was not accepting Germans at that point in time. In 1964 he changed his name back to Heinrich Wagner.
As indicated above, Wagner’s immigration file was an important piece of evidence linking the alleged perpetrator from Izraylovka with the accused Henrich Wagner who lived on Hindmarsh Island in South Australia.
John followed various lines of inquiry to determine how the immigration file would have been compiled and took steps to authenticate the document. He endeavoured to determine whether Wagner’s claim that his name change was at the suggestion of the immigration officer, was feasible.
John interviewed several former immigration staffers who worked in Europe at the end of the war, processing applications of people wishing to come to Australia as refugees. Wagner’s file had been signed off by someone whose name was not totally legible, it started as ‘N Wy…’ Initially none of the former staffers John interviewed recognized the signature or were involved in processing the Woijtenko/Wagner application.
John subsequently came across details of a woman named Margarita Boverat who worked as an immigration officer at the end of WWII. John was able to locate her in Paris. He telephoned her from Australia and arranged to meet her a week or two later at the Australian Embassy in Paris when he would be in Europe. At that stage, to meet her officially in Paris would have required a formal process called a Rogatory Commission, which would have taken months to set up, and the interview would have to be conducted by a French Investigative Judge. John explained his purpose and she agreed to meet him at the Embassy. Being considered as Australian territory, John could avoid the lengthy official Rogatory process.
On 12 June 1992 John met Boverat at the Australian Embassy in Paris. She provided useful information that would authenticate the Wagner immigration file. As the interview progressed she told John she also contacted another former immigration officer, Nicholas Wyrouboff, who resided in Paris and who had processed applications of refugees wanting to come to Australia. She presented a letter he had written to her and she gave it to John. The signature at the bottom of the letter appeared to be identical to the signature of the official who interviewed Wagner in 1949 and had signed off on his file. John could barely hide his excitement at this time and asked if she could tell him where Wyrouboff was. She replied ‘He’s right outside, he came here with me today.’
Nicholas Wyrouboff was from a Russian aristocratic family who fled to the United Kingdom in 1917. At the outbreak of World War II he attempted to join the British army but was rejected because of his national background. Eager to participate in the fighting he went to France and joined the French Armed Forces. He fought with distinction and was awarded the French Legion of Honour – the highest French military order.
John produced the Wagner/Woijtenko immigration file to Wyrouboff and he identified his signature as the officer who prepared it, based on information supplied by the applicant. Wyrouboff categorically denied he would have suggested the name change, pointing to his war record of fighting the Germans as a basis for not having assisted any German in immigrating to Australia.
Further evidence was provided by Wagner’s former de facto wife Erna Findell who migrated with him from Germany to Australia in 1950. She stated Wagner was using the name Andrej Woijtenko as early as 1946 when she first met him in Germany. This was three years before an immigration official allegedly told him to change his name, according to Wagner’s own version. She also gave evidence about overhearing a conversation in Australia between Wagner and his friends in which he talked about being at a place where a General shot Jews, saying when the grave was closed, the earth was still moving.
At an early stage of the investigation, John sent official requests to several countries trying to locate potential witnesses. One of those was Ernst Herring, who was allegedly in the company of Ivan Zhilun when the mischlinge children were placed on a cart driven by a man named Daviborshch and transported to their deaths (full details of this incident are provided in the book Nazis in Australia). John eventually located Herring in Germany.
John went to Germany where he met his SIU colleague, Investigator Brian Thompson and SIU German interpreter, Heike Klimaschka. They interviewed Herring with the assistance of the German police. His evidence placed the identification of Heinrich Wagner beyond any doubt. This presented a problem though, as Herring’s admissions about being present at the anti-Jewish action was clearly a war crime. Under German law he would have to be investigated and prosecuted in Germany. John’s team provided the German authorities with the information they required to commence a prosecution. John was proceeding on the basis, if the Germans would complete their case, then the SIU could potentially call Herring as a prosecution witness in Australia. Ultimately Herring was convicted in a German Children’s Court. (He was considered under adult age at the time of the offence.) Ironically this would prove to be the only conviction, arising directly or indirectly from the Australian War Crimes Investigations.
The work of the SIU and its successor the War Crimes Prosecution Support Unit (WCPSU) was winding up during 1993 and its staff members were going back to organisations they initially came from or were being retrenched. John gained a position with the National Crime Authority and left the WCPSU on 15 October 1993 – on the understanding he would be redeployed to the WCPSU to complete the Wagner trial the following year.
As a footnote to Wagner’s criminal proceedings in Adelaide, the preliminary committal hearing had commenced in the Adelaide Magistrate’s court on 1 June 1992 before Magistrate Boxall. On 20 November 1992 the Magistrate committed Wagner to stand trial in the South Australian Supreme Court. The trial was initially scheduled to commence in early 1993 but subsequently, a later trial date was listed in early 1994. In late November 1993, however, Wagner suffered a non-fatal heart attack.
At the time I was in Bonn, Germany, with the Grant Niemann, the Deputy Commonwealth DPP. We were there to facilitate a number of Wagner prosecution witnesses giving evidence by way of Video Conference Link to the Supreme Court sitting in Adelaide. Following Wagner’s heart attack, the proceedings were suspended and Niemann and I returned to Australia.
Before I arrived in Sydney on 15 December, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Michael Rozenes QC, wasted no time in terminating the proceedings against Wagner on 9 December.
This in my view was a hasty act and denied both me, as the lead investigator and head of the WCPSU, and Niemann, (Rozenes’ deputy in South Australia), an opportunity to personally express our views in relation to the future of the proceedings. I asked myself did Rozenes overlook the fact, when considering the state of Wagner’s health, that the Australian war crimes prosecutions were not ordinary cases. In amending the war crimes legislation the government recognised the accused would be elderly and probably suffering health issues. There was a balance to be achieved. Wagner had committed serious war crimes involving the murder of over 100 innocent men, women and young children.
This unnecessarily hasty decision by Rozenes brought the work of the SIU/WCPSU to an abrupt and premature end. It should be noted Wagner lived for another ten years.
With the termination of Wagner’s criminal proceedings, the WCPSU commenced to wind down permanently.
John recalls that overall, working with the SIU on Australian War Crimes cases was a life-changing experience. The work itself, sad as it was, was fascinating and opened an interest in history for John he never before realised. Career-wise it was the start of a new direction, or to quote someone John encountered later in life, ‘It opened the door to a room that I never knew existed’.
On leaving the SIU and WCPSU, John worked briefly for the National Crime Authority, before joining me, Bob Reid and Grant Niemann at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. John moved there with his family and they lived and worked in the Netherlands for seven years.
Initially John was an Investigation Team Leader, then an Investigations Commander and for the final three years, he was the Chief of Investigations. Our work in The Hague was demanding and successful with significant prosecutions and convictions of the most senior political and military leaders who were the architects of brutal ethnic cleansing in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Staff of the Tribunal came from many countries within the United Nations and from many different professional and cultural backgrounds. This was difficult work, presenting many challenges, but overwhelmingly a great experience, John recalls.
John (far left) on the occasion of the signing of the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic
Standing next to John is the ICTY Chief Prosecutor, Louise Arbour. On her left is the late Nancy Patterson a US lawyer and I am standing next to Nancy (with the Milosevic indictment in my hand). Photo taken on 22 May 1999 in my office in The Hague.
In 2004 John was offered the role as Chief Investigator for the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on Darfur. It was a three-month Commission. He jumped at the opportunity and within days he travelled to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva and then onto Sudan. This was to be the first time a UN Commission of Inquiry had a team of professional investigators. Normally such enquiries were carried out by eminent persons or international jurists supported by United Nations staffers. Working with a team of 12, comprising six investigators, three analysts and three forensic specialists, John and the others provided the groundwork for the Commissioners to prepare a hard-hitting report for the UN Security Council. The report resulted in the events in Darfur being referred to the International Criminal Court and the indictment of the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
John recalled reading that Telford Taylor (the US trial lawyer leading prosecution cases after World War II at Nuremburg), had plenty of speaking engagements on returning to the United States afterwards but struggled to find employment. Ultimately, he commenced private practice as a lawyer. Although John doesn’t claim such an illustrious career, he felt like he was in a similar position.
With Telford Taylor’s words ringing in his head, John realised his career prospects in Australia were limited. John felt he had two options. He could stay where he was and feel depressed or he could do something about it. John had been working pro bono with a group, largely from the United States, who established a non-profit organization, namely the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) which was based in The Hague. The founding Directors of the Institute recognized there was no institution or organisation providing training for investigators entering the world of war crimes investigations. The Institute was established to remedy that. In 2005 it was a struggling organization, but one that was already receiving high praise for its work. John took over the position of Executive Director and he led the IICI until his retirement in 2016.
In that time the IICI established a world-wide reputation of excellence and originality in its work. It reached and trained over 3,000 investigators, lawyers, analysts and human rights defenders with its courses in International Criminal Investigations, Investigation of Sexual and Gender Based Violence, Analysis in Investigations, Interview Skills and others. It took mobile training courses to a range of countries emerging from conflicts including Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Columbia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Argentina to name a few. The IICI became the training provider for Justice Rapid Response helping to establish a roster of investigation professionals available to the international community.
These achievements all grew from the experience gained with the Australian Special Investigations Unit.
John can be very proud of the outstanding contribution he made to the work of the Special Investigations Unit and to the enforcement of International Humanitarian Law.