Octogenarian SS officer goes on trial for multiple murder

Julius Viel, a former SS junior officer faces seven charges of murder. At the close of World War II in 1945, he is alleged to have shot dead seven Jewish prisoners at a detention camp in Leitmeritz in what is now the Czech Republic. The Jews had been detailed to dig tank traps along with other prisoners.

Viel, who worked as a newspaper reporter after the war, was arrested at his home in Wangen, Bavaria in October 1999. He denies the charges and was pronounced fit to stand for trial by doctors shortly before the hearing. The court has invited 34 witnesses from Germany and abroad to give evidence at the trial.

The chief prosecution witness is Canadian economics professor Adalbert Lallier, a former Waffen SS member, who says he witnessed the killings. At the end of the 1990s Lallier made a statement about what he saw, enabling a new investigation which led to the trial.

With the Russian Red Army advancing, members of a radio operator training group and other SS soldiers, among them Viel, were looking on as the seven Jewish prisoners and other slave labourers dug anti- tank trenches at Leitmeritz.

According to Lallier, Viel, a 27-year-old instructor at the time, suddenly grabbed a machine-gun and shot dead the seven men in short succession. The prosecution says the slayings were "bloodthirsty" and that Viel acted out of "base motives".

A 1960s probe into Viel's alleged crimes had to be halted after insufficient evidence was found. Following extensive research in German and Czech archives, investigators interviewed 360 people.

Viel's defence lawyers argue that Lallier's evidence contains contradictions and they cast doubts on the reliability of witness statements about murders said to have taken place 55 years ago.

(la/dpa)