MARK COLVIN: How many war criminals are living among us?

Probably quite a few, according to a paper unveiled at the Lowy Institute today.

Its author Fergus Hanson says more needs to be done to find, convict and if necessary, extradite war criminals.

I asked him about Australia's historical record on war criminals.

FERGUS HANSON: We've had no successful prosecutions, no successful extradition and no revocation of citizenship in any war crimes case in Australian history. So, and that I think is not necessarily an indication that there aren't any suspects here, it's more a case of how many resources, how much, how many resources we dedicate to this issue.

MARK COLVIN: You say that we've failed repeatedly. You mean, since the Second World War?

FERGUS HANSON: Immediately following the Second World War, it's a little bit of an obscure point of history, but quite interestingly we ran about 800 trials of Japanese defendants. And that resulted in about 500 convictions and over 100 executions, in and outside of Australia.

But since then there really hasn't been any attempt to deal with domestic war crimes suspects except for the Special Investigations Unit which ran in the late 1980s and early 1990s and looked at Nazi, accused Nazi war criminals.

MARK COLVIN: And even that didn't have a very high strike rate.

FERGUS HANSON: No, you're right. There was charges laid against three individuals, but no convictions. And the unit was disbanded in 1992. Now, we've set up border screening processes about seven years ago, but the international experience really demonstrates that no matter how good your border screening processes are, you're always going to get suspects slipping through. There's just too many people going through the doors to really stay on top of it.

MARK COLVIN: Do you think there were Nazi war criminals who lived here in obscurity and died in obscurity?

FERGUS HANSON: The evidence would seem to suggest that. If you look at the report, the final report of the Special Investigations Unit it concluded there was 27 cases where it was satisfied that suspects had committed serious war crimes, but there was insufficient evidence to launch a prosecution.

MARK COLVIN: But to bring it close to date, the Balkans obviously provided a lot of immigration to this country. Is it possible that war criminals from the Balkans Wars of the 1990s are living here undetected?

FERGUS HANSON: In my paper I've tried to steer away from identifying a single region where war crimes suspects might have come from. But I think certainly anywhere where there's been a serious conflict in the last few decades there would quite possibly be the case that there were suspected war criminals living here.

I mean, there was the Yugoslav conflict, there's enormous genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994, there's a conflict that's ongoing in the Democratic Republic of Congo where millions of people have been killed. And a similar problem on an enormous scale in Sudan at the moment.

MARK COLVIN: The ones you haven't mentioned would be, for instance, from Vietnam and Cambodia.

FERGUS HANSON: Afghanistan, Chile, there's a number of conflicts I think. There's, I mean there's been dozens and dozens of international conflicts, and pretty much any of them are potential sources of suspected war criminals.

MARK COLVIN: So what should the authorities do? It seems to me that it's a real looking for a needle in a haystack situation. Looking as an outsider, I mean, how do you go about finding an Iraqi war criminal or a Cambodian war criminal in Australia?

FERGUS HANSON: Yeah, you're right, it has really, I mean, because it is very difficult it's always tended to be put in the too-hard basket and it's something that just gets pushed, pushed back and pushed back. But there's been some recent experience from other countries that really demonstrates that it is possible to take measures that are relatively modest and that are very successful.

MARK COLVIN: What kinds of things?

FERGUS HANSON: The first, the first and most important is really to have dedicated resources to look into this issue. It's never going to be a priority issue to look into because it's very difficult to get results, so you need to have dedicated resources.

MARK COLVIN: By which you might mean, say, a unit of the Australian Federal Police?

FERGUS HANSON: Exactly. A small unit within the Australian Federal Police. And we're not talking on a grand scale here, the SIU (Special Investigations Unit) was quite large, I'm talking about something that is relatively modest, a few staff to conduct investigations, raise awareness in local, key communities, and conduct a small number of investigations each year into the most appropriate cases.

MARK COLVIN: What are the consequences of inaction? I mean, I remember a story, I think it was last year, about a woman who found herself in the same English language class as a man who had allegedly raped her.

FERGUS HANSON: Yeah, I mean, on the grass roots level it's obviously very painful for the victims of these atrocious crimes to be left having to face, you know, the people who have perpetrated these crimes against them, or allegedly have. So I think on that level there's a very strong reason why these allegations should be investigated and resources should be given to allow that to occur.

On a bigger level, on a larger scale, I think it really, Australia will find itself increasingly at odds with the international trends. We've seen dedicated war crimes units set up in the US, in Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and trials are taking place in other countries, especially in Europe. So I think if Australia continues with its current approach it will increasingly find itself at odds with the, with international trends. And that doesn't speak well, I don't think, in terms of its good international citizenship, especially in the context of the UN Security Council bid, or its commitment to end impunity for war crimes globally.

MARK COLVIN: Fergus Hanson of the Lowy Institute.

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