ROME (AFP-EJP)---An Italian judge Monday revoked the permission
given to a former SS officer serving a life sentence under
house arrest for war crimes to go out to work.
Earlier in the day 93-year old Erich Priebke, condemned
to life for his
role in a 1944 massacre of civilians near Rome, had left
captivity for the first time to go to work by scooter, despite
protests from Rome’s Jewish community.
An Italian military judge decided last week to allow Priebke,
convicted of participating in the massacre at the Ardeatine
caves in which 335 civilians, including 75 Jews, were killed,
to leave the confines of his house arrest to work in the
office of his lawyer, Paolo Giachini.
The military tribunal’s prosecutor on Monday appealed
the decision allowing the former Nazi to work, following
harsh criticism from Jewish groups and war veteran organisations,
said Sebastiano Di Lascio, a lawyer for the Association of
the Families of the Victims of the Ardeatine Caves.
The military judge in charge of supervising sentences, Isacco
Giorgio
Giustiniani, said that as Priebke had not given details of
his timetable and ways of going to work, permission to go
out was temporarily withdrawn until "a competent judge
takes a decision on the basics of the case", according
to the Italian ANSA news agency.
Priebke and Giachini had left the lawyer’s home in
Rome, where the former SS officer is serving his sentence,
by scooter in the early hours Monday in an attempt to avoid
protesters, ANSA reported.
Around 100 members of the city's Jewish community, mostly
youths, held a noisy demonstration in front of the lawyer’s
office. They hold placards, screamed "murderer!" and
held up anti-Nazi signs outside Priebke lawyer’s study
in Via Panisperna.
One of the placards read: "My grandfather and grandmother
were in Auschwitz, I’m here", "335 times
shame" and "Military court shame".
Priebke returned by car to avoid demonstrators.
Renzo Gategna, head of Rome’s Jewish Community, noted
that Priebke had already been granted house arrests because
of his advanced age and that the decision sent out the wrong
signals.
"This is clearly another act of leniency towards a
man who showed no mercy in killing 335 innocent civilians
and has shown no remorse since," Gattegna said before
the judge’s decision to cancel the permission granted
to Priebke.
"This is absolutely ridiculous. Priebke is an unrepented
Nazi who doesn’t deserve any privileges or sympathy," said
Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jerusalem branch of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center.
Priebke was sentenced to life in prison in 1998 for his
participation in the Ardeatine massacre, carried out in retaliation
for an attack by the Italian resistance on an SS unit.
The former Nazi officer was arrested in Argentina in 1994
and extradited to Italy the following year.
"A personal tragedy"
In a 2003 interview to Italian state television RAI, Priebke
described the Fosse Ardeatine massacre as "a personal
tragedy" but did not ask for forgiveness to the victims.
In 1999 he was permitted to serve the remainder of his sentence
under house arrest in his lawyer’s home because of
illness and old age.
In a 1994 interview with the American Broadcasting corporation
while in Argentina, where he had taken refuge after WWII,
he justified his actions by saying he was only following
orders from the Gestapo chief of Rome.
In 2003, he described the Fosse Ardeatine massacre as "a
personal tragedy" but did not ask for forgiveness to
the victims, in an interview to the Italian public television
RAI.
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