Haralds Puntulis

Haralds Puntulis (born Haralds Petrovich Puntulis in 1909; died on July 1st, 1982 in Toronto, Canada) was a former Latvian police officer who, during World War II, served as the chief of the 4th Malta police precinct during the German occupation of Latvia. A Nazi sympathiser, Puntulis was tried in absentia by Soviet courts in Latvia for his involvement in war crimes during this period. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, but escaped punishment by moving to Canada after the war.

Serving as the Head of the 4th Police Precinct of the Militia Police of the District of Rezekne, Puntulis reported to Alberts Eihelis, and was the leader of a special firing squad that carried out mass murders in Maltā and the Audrini Massacre, executing the entire population of the village, including the public execution of 30 villagers in the public square of Rezekne.^[3]

In 1948, following WWII, Puntulis fled to Canada. In 1965, the Canadian government refused to extradite Puntulis to the USSR, nor did it take any steps to prosecute him in Canada.^[4] The Canadian Department of External Affairs took the position in a memo that Puntulis, "regardless of anything else he may or may not have been doing, was in a state of armed revolt against the Soviet Union", and that his acts during this time "may equally well be considered to have been acts of civil war...and can be considered to be political offences and therefore not extraditable", a position that may have been informed by the fact that many accused Nazi war criminals from Eastern Europe were also anti-communists.^[5]

Puntulis was convinced of the murder of 713 Jews, 28 gypsies, and 9 communists. During the trial, that concluded on 12 October 1965,^[1] Puntulis was named as having personally shot an 11-year-old Jewish boy in the head after a subordinate failed at the task.^[6] David Levy, then the Moscow correspondent for the CBC, described Puntulis' trial in absentia as a "...show trial, but [with] no inquisitorial atmosphere.  The fact is, they had evidence."^[6]

According to Canadian investigative journalist Jeff Ansell, the United States Office of Special Investigations had files on Puntulis as a part of its work to locate and bring to justice Nazi war criminals, but the Canadian government did not request these files or demonstrate an interest in investigating Puntulis.^[7]

Historian Atli Rodal, author of the Rodal Report for the Deschênes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, writes that an interdepartmental meeting of the Canadian government concluded that there was "substantial evidence against Puntulis, and that revocation of citizenship seemed possible", but that then-Minister of Justice Pierre Elliott Trudeau dismissed the possibility, concerned about domestic political considerations with Eastern European communities in Canada..^[8]

The Canadian government did eventually begin denaturalization proceedings against Nazi war criminals in the mid-1990s, but by that time, Puntulis was dead,^[8] having died only weeks before a 1982 Today Magazine exposé on his war crimes was published.^[9]