Judge won't dismiss lawsuit seeking to deport alleged Nazi war criminal

A federal judge today refused to dismiss a lawsuit that would strip the U.S. citizenship of an 86-year-old Bellevue man for allegedly participating in the Nazi-sponsored mass murders of tens of thousands of Serbian Jews during World War II.

U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled that he is "satisfied that the government has sufficiently pleaded facts that, if true, establish that Mr. (Peter) Egner participated on some level in the persecutions during World War II and thus potentially he lacked the good moral character required" to be a naturalized citizen.

"I disagree, but I guess we'll find out," said Egner's Seattle immigration attorney, Robert Gibbs. He pointed out the judge, in reaching his conclusion to let the Department of Justice lawsuit proceed, has yet to determine whether the government can prove those facts or whether the case is strong enough to take to trial.

The Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations, which hunts war criminals, filed a lawsuit against Egner in July alleging that he lied on immigration documents when he applied for citizenship in 1965 after coming to the U.S. in 1960. He lived for many years in Portland, and moved to be near family in Bellevue after his wife died in 2005.

According to the complaint, Egner said he was a member of the German army, omitting his involvement in the notorious Nazi-run Security Police and Security Service (SPSS) in Belgrade, Serbia — then Yugoslavia — from 1941 through the fall of 1943, when he was wounded.

Serbian officials have also said they interested in extraditing Egner for criminal prosecution.

The Department of Justice lawsuit alleges that Egner was a guard and interpreter for the police service, which participated in the roundup and systematic killings of tens of thousands of Serbian Jews, Gypsies and political dissidents.

The Office of Special Investigations identified Egner's participation through Nazi documents, the complaint says.

Court documents allege that during the first nine months that Egner was a member of the SPSS, the unit operated as the Belgrade Einsatzgruppe, a special mobile death unit undertaking early efforts to systematically murder Jews as part of Hitler's "final solution."

The SPSS "played a leading role" in the gassings of more than 6,200 Jewish women and children at the Semlin concentration camp near Belgrade, according to OSI officials. Gibbs points out that the complaint never alleges that Egner participated in any SPSS atrocities. Moreover, immigration law in effect in 1966, when Egner won his citizenship, would not necessarily have barred him from becoming a citizen even if he had disclosed his SPSS membership, Gibbs said.

Robart, however, said he was persuaded that, in "certain circumstances, merely membership in the SPSS may be sufficient to establish a lack of good moral character," and made Egner ineligible for citizenship.

Gibbs said his aged client was recently hospitalized for congestive heart failure. The disease, he said, has affected the oxygen flow to his client's brain and made Egner's memory of events 67 years ago even more difficult to recall.

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com

Information from Seattle Times archives is included in this report.