- A new Justice Department team will centralize efforts to investigate war crimes in Ukraine.
- The team will be led by a longtime official who spent years working to deport Nazi war criminals.
- That official, Eli Rosenbaum, will be joined by prosecutors with expertise in human rights abuses.
Declaring there is "no hiding place for war criminals," Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday said the Justice Department had formed a new team to investigate war crimes and other atrocities committed during Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Garland announced the War Crimes Accountability Team during an unannounced visit to Ukraine, where he met with the country's top prosecutor, Iryna Venediktova, just across the Polish-Ukrainian border. The team is expected to centralize the Justice Department's efforts to support investigations into suspected war crimes in Ukraine, bringing together experts in investigations involving human rights abuses along with technical assistance for criminal prosecutions, evidence collection, and forensics.
Leading the team is a longtime Justice Department official, Eli Rosenbaum, who previously spearheaded efforts to track down, denaturalize, and deport Nazi war criminals as director of the Office of Special Investigations. Rosenbaum will be joined by Hope Olds, the acting chief of a Justice Department unit focused on human rights abuses, and prosecutors Christian Levesque, Christina Giffin, and Courtney Urschel.
"The US Justice Department will pursue every avenue of accountability for those who commit war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine," Garland said in prepared remarks Tuesday. "Working alongside our domestic and international partners, the Justice Department will be relentless in our efforts to hold accountable every person complicit in the commission of war crimes, torture, and other grave violations during the unprovoked conflict in Ukraine."
As head of the Justice Department's human rights and special prosecutions section, Rosenbaum oversaw efforts that led to the deportation of Jakiw Palij, a former Nazi labor camp guard in German-occupied Poland who lived in Queens, New York, following World War II. Palij was 95 at the time of his removal from the US in 2018.
Rosenbaum more recently handled the trial and appeal of the removal case against Friedrich Karl Berger, a Tennessee resident with German citizenship who was deported for participating in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution while serving as an armed guard at a Nazi concentration camp in 1945. Berger was the 70th Nazi persecutor removed from the US, the Justice Department said last year.
Within months of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Garland said the Justice Department was closely monitoring reports of mass graves and evidence of other atrocities. His remarks came days after images emerged of Ukrainian civilians killed in Bucha, a town near Kyiv.
"We have seen the dead bodies of civilians, some with bound hands, scattered in the streets," Garland said in April.
"The world sees what is happening in Ukraine," he added. "The Justice Department sees what is happening in Ukraine."
Amid the mounting international outcry, President Joe Biden said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "war criminal."