US deports former Nazi camp guard to Austria



The United States has deported a Nazi death camp guard to Austria despite Vienna's warnings that it was legally barred from prosecuting him, US and Austrian officials said Thursday.
The US Justice Department said it deported Josias Kumpf, 83, who worked as an armed SS guard at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Germany and at the Trawniki Labor Camp in Poland.



US deports former Nazi camp guard to Austria
"Josias Kumpf, by his own admission, stood guard with orders to shoot any surviving prisoners who attempted to escape an SS massacre that left thousands of Jews dead," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita Glavin.
She called his deportation "another milestone in the government's long-running effort to ensure that individuals who participated in crimes against humanity do not find sanctuary in this country."
But the Austrian justice ministry said it would not be able to prosecute him because the statute of limitations had expired in 1965.
"We repeatedly indicated it to the United States," ministry spokeswoman Katharina Swoboda told AFP in Vienna. "Our hands are tied."
She added that Austria had urged US officials to deport him to Poland but that Polish authorities told the Americans that they lacked evidence to prosecute him.
But a court in Spain has agreed to hear a case of crimes against humanity against Kumpf, according to a Spanish non-governmental organization representing Spanish victims and their descendents.
Swoboda said Austria has yet to receive an extradition request from Spain but that Austrian authorities contacted Spanish counterparts after media reports about the case.
Spain acts under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows for the prosecution of crimes against humanity, genocide and other human rights offences, even if they were committed in another country.
Kumpf, who was born in Serbia, emigrated from Austria to America in 1956, acquired US citizenship in 1964, and settled in Racine, Wisconsin.
US officials said he took part in heinous acts during the Second World War that contributed to the death of thousands of civilians.
Prisoners under his watch at slave labor sites in Nazi-occupied France were forced to build launching platforms for German missile attacks on Britain.
While a guard at Trawniki, he participated in a November 3, 1943 mass shooting in which Jewish 8,000 men, women and children were murdered in a single day.
Kumpf helped guard the prisoners -- including approximately 400 children -- who were shot and killed in pits at Trawniki. According to Kumpf, his assignment had been to shoot to kill any survivers.
The Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations -- the US office tasked with locating and prosecuting or repatriating Nazi war criminals hiding out in the United States -- has won cases against 107 individuals since it began operations in 1979, the office said in a statement.
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Thursday, March 19th 2009
AFP
           


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