Israel has refused to extradite a Polish-born Jew accused of war crimes against Germans in World War II

BBC News:

Solomon Morel, an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor, is said to be responsible for the deaths of up to 1,500 prisoners.

Mr Morel commanded a Russian-run camp where Germans were held after the Soviets occupied Poland in 1945.

Mr Morel moved to Israel in 1994 when inquiries began in Poland. A previous extradition call was refused in 1998.

Israel's Justice Ministry told the BBC that Poland's extradition request had been turned down, but gave no further details.

Polish prosecutors say Israel refused the request, saying there was "no basis whatsoever" to extradite Mr Morel, the Associated Press reports.

Israel has no extradition treaty with Poland.

A prosecutor at Poland's Institute for National Remembrance - which investigates war-era crimes - criticised the decision, alluding to Israel's support of the prosecution of elderly people accused of genocide against Jews during the war.

"There should be one measure for judging war criminals, irrespective whether they are German, Israeli or any other nationality," Ewa Koj told the Associated Press news agency.

Mr Morel had survived incarceration in Auschwitz concentration camp earlier in the war, and lost many members of his family in the Holocaust.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organisation, regularly pressures foreign governments to prosecute those accused of Holocaust-era crimes.

Last year the organisation launched a "last chance" campaign to bring former Nazis and other Holocaust-era criminals to justice.

Mr Morel's case was brought to light in the 1990s when a US Jewish journalist, John Sack, published a book detailing alleged "revenge killings" by Jews placed in charge of prison camps at the end of the war.

Poland attempted to extradite Mr Morel in 1998, but Israel refused the request on technical grounds.

Poland's post-war communist government imprisoned some 100,000 Germans in 1945, and at least 15,000 are estimated to have died in captivity.

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