Nazi Killer Charged

Kyt · Apr 16, 2008

German prosecutor charges 'hitman' over Nazi-era killings - CNN.com

BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- An 86-year-old man who acted as a hit man for a Nazi death squad that executed Dutch civilians during World War II has been charged with three counts of murder, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

Dortmund prosecutor Ulrich Maass told The Associated Press he had charged Heinrich Boere with the 1944 murders of three men as a member of the Waffen SS death squad code-named Silbertanne, or Silver Pine.

The AP was first to report last month that Maass had quietly reopened the case against Boere in a last attempt to bring him to justice.

Boere was convicted of the same three murders in the Netherlands in 1949 and sentenced to death -- later commuted to life imprisonment -- but has managed to escape jail so far.

The son of a Dutch man and German woman, Boere was 18 when he joined the Waffen SS -- the fanatical paramilitary organization faithful to Hitler's ideology -- at the end of 1940, only months after his country had fallen to the Nazi blitzkrieg.

After taking part in the invasion of the Soviet Union, he ended up back in the Netherlands as part of Silbertanne, a Waffen SS death squad composed mostly of Dutch volunteers tasked with killing fellow countrymen in reprisal for attacks by the anti-Nazi resistance.

The unit is suspected of 54 killings, and Boere has admitted to taking part in three, according to Dutch court documents.

Boere detailed the killings in statements to Dutch police preserved in the court file.

The first was in July 1944, a pharmacist named Fritz Hubert Ernst Bicknese.

The next two came that September: first bicycle-shop owner Teun de Groot then, later the same day, a man named F.W. Kusters, about whom the files say little.

Reflecting on that day, Boere told the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad in 2007 that "it was another time, with different rules."

He recalled ringing de Groot's doorbell and asking him for his papers.

"When we knew for sure we had the right person, we shot him dead, at the door," he said. "I didn't feel anything, it was work. Orders were orders, otherwise it would have meant my skin. Later it began to bother me, now I'm sorry."

The murder charges were filed Tuesday with the state court in Aachen, a city in western Germany on the Netherlands border, Maass said.

It was not immediately clear when Boere would be brought to trial, and his attorney, Gordon Christiansen, said he would remain living at his old-age home in Eschweiler, near Aachen, while the process was under way.

Christiansen would not comment on the charges, saying he had not yet seen the official documents.

But he said that one of his first actions would be to file a motion with the court to determine whether Boere was fit to stand trial.

"I'm no doctor, I can't say myself," Christiansen told the AP. "It also depends on how long it takes for this process to begin; one must see."

The Netherlands, where he was convicted in 1949, has sought Boere's extradition but a German court in 1983 refused on the ground that he might have German citizenship, and Germany at the time had no provision to extradite its nationals.

A state court in Aachen ruled in 2007 that Boere could legally serve his sentence in Germany but an appeals court in Cologne overturned the ruling months later, saying the 1949 conviction was invalid because Boere was unable to present a defense.

It was after that ruling Maass quietly reopened the case, effectively beginning from scratch to bring the case back to court for trial.

Boere is among more than 1,000 cases worldwide which the Nazi-tracking Simon Wiesenthal Center says were still open as of April 1, 2007
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Antipodean Andy · Sep 7, 2008

Germany to try former SS man - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Germany will try an 86-year-old former SS member who confessed to killing three Dutch civilians more than 60 years ago but has escaped a death sentence and avoided jail, a court said on Thursday.

Heinrich Boere will be tried in Aachen in early 2009, Susanne Wernerus, chief justice of the city's district court, said.

Boere was captured by US forces in the Netherlands after the war and confessed to killing the Dutch civilians as a member of an SS hit squad targeting anti-Nazi fighters.

He then escaped and fled to Germany, before being sentenced to death in absentia in the Netherlands in 1949.

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre lists Boere as one of the top 10 Nazi war criminals still at large.

Germany refused a 1980 Dutch extradition request because of complications over Boere's citizenship. Efforts to convict him in Germany also failed.

Germany's Bild newspaper said on Thursday that organisational issues and health problems might enable Boere to avoid being tried, but Ms Wernerus denied this.

"As soon as we have recruited an expert adviser and proved the competency of the court, the trial will begin," she said.
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spidge · Sep 8, 2008

There is no Statute of Limitations" and neither should there be!

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Nazi Killer Charged

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