Calls for Public Inquiry amid claims Secret Intelligence Service protected alleged Nazi war criminals

Calls have been issued for a public inquiry amid claims that the Secret Intelligence Service (also known as MI6) protected alleged Nazi war criminals after WWII.

The controversy has arisen after the BBC discovered that a suspected Nazi collaborator, Stanislaw Chrzanowski, may have worked for the agency.

German authorities believe that he may have murdered tens of people during the Holocaust, while British police claimed that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him. 

Mr Chrzanowski was suspected by his stepson of having committed atrocities against Jews and others in the town of Slonim in Belarus, and investigated his past and built a dossier of evidence, including eyewitness accounts.

Although British police interviewed Mr Chrzanowski, no charges were brought. He always denied being a war criminal and died in 2017. His stepson died six months later, but after handing a BBC journalist his dossier, for which the BBC has reportedly since found further supporting evidence.

It is believed that MI6 may have recruited Mr Chrzanowski at a refugee camp in Berlin, and experts believe that the agency would have known about Mr Chrzanowski’s past. However, in the late 1980s and 1990s, the agency destroyed tens of thousands of files pertaining to its agents to protect them from more draconian laws that would have put them at risk of prosecution. Mr Chrzanowski’s files may have been among them.

Conservative MP Robert Halfon called the BBC’s findings “horrific and frightening” and said that he intends to call on the Parliamentary Security Committee to investigate.