Sydney - Confessions by a former refugee that he is a killer responsible for scores of deaths in Myanmar have raised questions about whether other possible war criminals are living in Australia undetected.
Myanmar-born Htoo Htoo Han, now an Australian citizen, has lived in the country for more than decade and is a father to three school-aged children.
But he claims to have a dark past, saying he infiltrated the student movement in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, in the late 1980s and provided information to an army death squad.
Han says he killed 24 young men himself with bullets to the back of their heads, and was implicated in the deaths of more than 100 others.
“I like to say sorry for what I done,” the 44-year-old told AFP, saying he went public with his story because he could no longer live with the guilt.
“I not torture. But the policy was, we had to destroy the evidence.
“I am guilty, I kill a lot of people, I'm a bad guy.”
Within days of Han's story gaining media attention, another former refugee from Myanmar came forward to say he too had been involved with the military in his homeland and was responsible for the deaths of up to 50 people.
Neither claim can be verified, but the confessions have prompted the Immigration Department to check the men's files, while the Australian Federal Police is also evaluating the declarations.
Whether or not the admissions are genuine, the cases highlight the need for a dedicated unit to track down suspected war criminals in Australia, said Graham Blewitt, former head of a now disbanded government team that hunted Nazi war criminals.
Blewitt, who also spent a decade as deputy prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, said there were rigorous screening processes in place for migrants, refugees and visitors.
“From that angle I don't know there's much more can be done,” he said. “But when they get here, that's a completely different story.”
Blewitt said the Australian Federal Police struggled to investigate claims such as Han's because it lacked a specialised unit working on the issue.
“Doing the Nazi war crimes work and the Yugoslav war crimes work - you need dedicated resources to do that. These are protracted investigations which require overseas investigations and you just can't do it from home,” he said.
Australia conducted war crimes trials of Japanese defendants between November 1945 and April 1951 in various Asian locations including Hong Kong and Singapore, and in the north Australian town of Darwin.
But it was not until the 1980s that Nazi suspects were seriously pursued in Australia, and although three individuals were eventually charged, none of the prosecutions were successful and none of the men were extradited.
More recent cases remain unresolved.
Former Hungarian soldier Charles Zentai, who has lived in Australia for six decades, is accused of murdering a Jewish teenager in Budapest in 1944. He has always maintained his innocence and is battling his extradition to Hungary.
Serbian war crimes suspect Dragan Vasiljkovic is also fighting against being sent to Croatia, where he has been accused of being involved in torture and murder during the 1991-1995 conflict. He denies committing war crimes.
Blewitt said while there was unlikely to ever be another Nazi war criminal prosecution in Australia, suspects from other wars could end up in the country.
“I think the government is hoping against hope it won't happen, but the reality is that the issues keep arising,” he said.
Fergus Hanson, a research fellow at Sydney foreign policy think-tank the Lowy Institute, agreed that the emergence of suspected war criminals living in Australia was “bound to happen”.
“It's a virtual certainty that there's war criminals living in Australia. It's inconceivable that there wouldn't be,” he said, adding they could have fled countries such as Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Iran and Iraq.
While investigations were difficult, he said, “huge loopholes” in Australian law relating to the crimes covered and when they took place also made prosecution difficult.
Han says he wants his case to go to the International Criminal Court.
“I want to say very deeply sorry... for those waiting for their sons to come back,” he said. “It's not going to happen.” - Sapa-AFP