MILAN
(AP) — Rome’s military tribunal on Friday convicted a
90-year-old ex-Nazi in absentia for his role in the 1943
execution of 120 Italian officers on the Greek island
of Kefalonia and sentenced him to life in prison.
Alfred Stork’s conviction was the first in Italy for the Kefalonia massacres
in which thousands of Italian soldiers were killed in
September 1943. Previous attempts at prosecution were
closed because the defendants had died or those responsible
could not be properly identified, said military prosecutor
Marco De Paolis.
Stork, who now lives in Germany, was tried as a member of an execution squad
that killed the 120 Italian officers, including division
commander Gen. Antonio Gardin, on Sept 23, 1943, De Paolis
said.
Between 3,000 and 4,000 Italian
soldiers were killed in the weeklong massacre in September
1943. Italian troops occupying Greece with their German
allies suddenly found themselves in enemy territory when
Italy signed an armistice with the Allies following the
fall of fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
“There were numerous massacres
in those five or seven days, all over the island. Some
were killed fighting, others were shot down, some were
arrested and killed after being held for a day,” De Paolis
said.
Two German officers were convicted
at the Nuremberg trials of the Kefalonia massacres, along
with other war crimes, and sentenced from 12 to 20 years.
Other prosecution attempts in Germany and Italy in the
1950s and 1960s failed.
De Paolis said he launched
this investigation in 2009 at the request of two victims’
children, identifying Stork after receiving files from
another failed attempt at prosecuting 80 suspects in
the early 2000s.
De Paolis said he felt it
was “useless’ to petition for Stork’s extradition for
trial since Germany has refused in the past to turn over
its citizens even when convicted of Nazi-era crimes.
Efraim Zuroff, the head Nazi-hunter
at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, noted that Italian military
courts have in recent years convicted many Germans for
wartime massacres but always in absentia due to Germany’s
refusal to extradite its citizens. Italy as a result
has requested in previous cases for those convicted and
sentenced to life to serve their time in Germany.
“The Italians have made a
very admirable effort in the past decade to find and
bring to court, not in a literal sense, individuals responsible
for some terrible atrocities,” he said in a phone call
from Jerusalem. “It’s unfortunate that only one of them
has been convicted in Germany.” timesofisrael.com
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