Jewish crime in Britain: Greville Janner, a prominent campaigner for Holocaust victims who was later accused of child sex abuse, has died aged 87

Janner, a former member of parliament for the Labour Party for almost 30 years and ex-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, was best-known for his calls for reparations for families of thousands of Jews who fled Nazi persecution in World War Two. “The passing of Greville Janner marks the end of an era for the Jewish community,” Mick Davis, chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council, said. Janner had long faced accusations of child sex crimes and was the subject of three investigations between 1991 and 2007. He denied the allegations, but Britain’s Director of Public Prosecutions said in April 2015 that both prosecutors and police had made mistakes in not acting against him sooner. Recently, a London High Court judge ruled that Janner, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, was too ill to stand trial over 22 charges of indecent assault and other sex crimes, concluding months of legal argument over the peer’s mental health. However, a “trial of the facts” had been due to take place in his absence in April 2016, when a jury could decide whether Janner did in fact commit the abuse, but with no finding of guilt or conviction over the allegations by former residents of children’s homes in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. “The alleged victims of Janner are devastated that having waited so long for justice, it’s likely to be denied to them at the final hurdle,” Liz Dux, the lawyer for some of his accusers wrote.