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Bonn Ratifies Treaty to Plug Ex-Nazis' Freedom Loophole
International Herald Tribune January 2, 1975 BONN, Jan. 31 (UPI).—The West German parliament has plugged a legal loophole that allowed former Nazis to stay at large. The bill's main lobbyist went home to Paris today saying. "I'm very happy." Despite the opposition Christian Democrats' negative votes prompted by what they called imprecise wording, the Bundestag last night ratified a treaty with Prance permitting West German courts to put on trial former Nazis previously convicted in absentia by French courts. Many ex-Nazis convicted by the French came out of hiding In 1955 but, although French courts convicted them, they remained untouchable by courts in this country. In 1955, Paris had pressured Bonn into signing a treaty under which West German courts could not retry anyone previously convicted by a French court. France was then motivated by a fear that the accused would be acquitted at any retrial here. Beate Klarsfeld, 36, a Berlin-born woman who is married to a French Jew and lives in Paris, was the new treaty's best-known advocate, going to such lengths as slapping the face of former Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and attempting to kidnap Kurt Lischka, a former Nazi police chief in Paris who had been able to slip through the legal loophole. Fifteen plainclothes policemen watched Mrs. Klarsfeld to keep her from attending last night's parliamentary proceedings. She waited In the Bundestag's entrance hall. Mrs. Klarsfeld smiled When a friend rushed from the parliamentary chamber and shouted: "It has been passed!" Mrs. Klarsfeld said: "It is what we have been fighting for and we won." Walking out past uniformed policemen, she said: "I'm going to Paris on the overnight train. I'm very happy." Before being outvoted by the ruling coalition, the Christian Democrats said that, as the treaty is phrased, new trials could be ordered not only for men accused of murder but also for those accused of manslaughter, a World War II crime which became un-prosecutable several years ago under West Germany's statute of limitations. Justice Minister Hans-Jochen Vogel described the new treaty as a "chance to draw a line beneath a dark chapter of German history." |
