A
man convicted of collaborating with the Nazis in the
mass murder of Jews during World War II has been found
living in Germany.
Algimantas Dailide, 87, was stripped of his US citizenship
and fled the country in 2004 after lying about his
wartime activities.
He was an officer in the collaborationist
Lithuanian Security Police and handed over innocent Jews
from the Vilna Ghetto to the Nazis to be slaughtered.
Dailide, who is the ninth
most wanted man on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's list
of Nazi war criminals, settled in Kirchberg, Saxony,
where he has been living with his wife ever since.
A court in Vilnius convicted
him of war crimes in March 2006, but did not impose a
custodial sentence.
In July, a high court in Lithuania
ruled that he would not go to prison, partly because
of his frail health, but he has never been given a health
examination by the Lithuanian authorities and he was
spotted last week by the Israeli reporter out shopping
for groceries near his home.
He declared he was 'innocent'
of the war crimes charges for which he was convicted.
Dailide and his wife live
with his wife in a modest apartment on Torstrasse, opposite
the local town hall. Even though he is a convicted war
criminal, he has made no attempt to hide his identity.
His name appears on the mailbox and the intercom at the
entrance to the apartment block.
Dailide's German-born wife,
whom he met in 1945 after escaping Lithuania, has relatives
in Kirchberg, a town of 7,000 in what was formerly East
Germany.
Haaretz said the couple live on his wife's German pension
of £200 a month, and the remaining profits from the
sale of their house in the US.
Efraim Zuroff, Israel director
of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and its chief Nazi-hunter,
said he had spent many years persuading the Lithuanian
authorities to bring Dailide to trial.
'It is absolutely outrageous
that he is free today,' said Zuroff. 'The Lithuanians
have managed to make a farce out of the entire judicial
process.'
'Dailide was actually convicted
and sentenced but they didn't have the courage or fortitude
to implement the sentence,' he said, adding that no Lithuanian
collaborators had ever gone to jail.
'A lack of political willingness
to contend with the crimes of the past, along with extenuating
circumstances stemming from advanced age, are letting
Nazi criminals off the hook,' he said.
Zuroff said the German authorities
were unlikely to arrest him, because he was not convicted
directly of murder or of being an accessory to murder
with cruelty.
He called on the Lithuanian
courts to implement their own judgment against Dailide.
thisislondon.co.uk
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