ROME (AP) -- An Italian military court has allowed a former
Nazi officer convicted for his role in a 1944 massacre to
leave house arrest to work -- a ruling that sparked outrage
among the families of those murdered, politicians and Jewish
groups.
Since last month, 93-year-old Erich Priebke has been allowed
to leave the Rome apartment where he is serving a life sentence
to work at his lawyer's office, according to the attorney,
Paolo Giachini.
Priebke has been in prison or house arrest since he was
extradited to Italy in 1994 from Argentina. He was convicted
of war crimes three years later for his role in the massacre
of 335 civilians at the Ardeatine Caves on the outskirts
of Rome.
Priebke has admitted shooting two people and helping round
up the victims, but has always insisted he was just following
orders and should not be held responsible.
He was working as a translator because of his knowledge
of German, Italian, Spanish and English, Giachini told The
Associated Press. He said his client only came to the law
firm ''when necessary'' and declined to say if Priebke was
there Wednesday.
Giachini maintained that the judges ''could not refuse this
request'' because Italian law affords such benefits to all
convicts after 10 years in jail if they have been on good
behavior.
''A man of 93 who gets a job at a law firm? It's absurd,
it's a way to get around his sentence,'' Amos Luzzatto, a
former head of Italy's Jewish communities, told the Corriere
della Sera newspaper. ''I hope that Priebke will not take
advantage of this to organize an escape.''
Holocaust expert Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office
of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that the ruling ''insults
the family and friends of those murdered by Priebke and his
cohorts.''
''The passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of
Holocaust perpetrators and people like him, who had no mercy
for their victims, do not deserve any sympathy themselves,''
he said in a statement.
Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni expressed solidarity with angered
families of those killed in the massacre. Massimo Rendina,
head of a group of former Italian resistance fighters in
World War II, told Corriere that his association and the
relatives were considering appealing the ruling.
The executions at the caves took place March 24, 1944, 24
hours after a partisan attack in central Rome that killed
33 members of a Nazi military police unit. Nazi forces decided
to kill 10 Italians for every slain German, raiding prisons
for dozens of political prisoners, taking 75 Jews, and adding
common criminals and residents from near the site of the
partisan attack.
They rounded up five more men than the 330 they sought and
killed them all in the abandoned quarry.
nytimes.com
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