Despite his shady past, alleged murderer allowed to make aliyah

Though the Law of Return includes provisos aimed at preventing criminals from immigrating, Damian Karlik, who is suspected of murdering six members of the Oshrenko family last month, managed to conceal the fact that he was under criminal investigation when he moved to Israel.

Similarly Yaakov (Jack) Teitel, who is suspected of murdering two Palestinians and carrying out various other attacks, obtained citizenship even though he had previously been investigated for murder.

The gag order on Karlik's arrest was lifted yesterday. He has confessed to the murder.

The Karlik and Teitel cases reveal a major weakness in Israel's immigration system - which conducts exhaustive inquiries into whether an applicant is really Jewish, but not into whether he is a criminal who might endanger the public.

Three Israeli agencies are responsible for granting citizenship to Jewish immigrants: the Interior Ministry, which formally awards citizenship, and two organizations that make recommendations about individual applicants - Nativ for applicants from the former Soviet Union and the Jewish Agency for other countries.

Both Nativ and the Jewish Agency are supposed to insist that the applicant provide a certificate of good conduct from a local law enforcement agency. But in practice, they often make do with his assertion that he has no criminal record. Serious inquiries are rarely made of either the police in the applicant's home country or of the Israel Police, the Shin Bet security service and other Israeli intelligence organizations.

When Karlik moved to Israel from Russia in 2004, for instance, he was under investigation for a robbery in which the victim was injured. However, he concealed this fact from Nativ. Apparently, the issue never even arose during his interview, though Nativ agents are supposed to ask applicants whether they have a criminal past and make them sign affidavits on this matter.

A source involved in the current investigation against Karlik said he might have altered his name to ensure that the Russian probe would not be discovered.

As for Teitel, the two murders of which he is suspected were committed in 1997, when he was still an American citizen. Three years later, while he was in Israel on a tourist visa, he was detained and questioned by the Shin Bet on suspicion of involvement in the killings, but then released for lack of evidence.

Yet the Shin Bet's suspicions did not prevent the Interior Ministry from granting him citizenship a few months later.

Though the Law of Return grants automatic citizenship to any Jew who requests it, it does include an exception that allows criminals to be kept out. However, this exception is rarely invoked.

The Prime Minister's Office, which is responsible for Nativ, said in response that reliable information about Russian applicants is often impossible to obtain because the Russian government usually refuses to share it.