Germany tries Nazi 'hit man' (for 2nd World War killings)

[Turborama]

Source: Al Jazeera English

An 88-year-old former member of the Waffen SS has gone on trial in Germany over the second world war killings of three civilians in The Netherlands.

Heinrich Boere, who face son three counts of murder, admitted the killings to Dutch authorities when he was in captivity after the war but has managed to avoid prosecution for decades.

=snip=

Boere is charged with killing three men: Frans Kusters, a member of the Dutch resistance; Fritz Bicknese, a chemist; and Teun de Groot, a bicycle seller who helped hide Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.

He was captured by US forces in The Netherlands after the war.

Boere confessed to killing the three civilians in 1944 while a member of an SS death squad which hunted anti-Nazi resistance fighters.

He escaped and fled to Germany before being sentenced to death in absentia in the Netherlands in 1949, a sentence that was later reduced to life in prison.

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/10/2009102814234473985.html

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The article later says it took them 18 years after refusing extradition to finally make him face trial. What took them so long?

[sofa king]

1. Waiting for most of 'em to die off, is my guess.

The Netherlands' dark secret of World War II is that there were at least 20,000 Dutch volunteers serving the Germans, including two volunteer Waffen-SS brigades, one of which fought against the liberation of Belgium and The Netherlands.

After the war, the entire Waffen-SS was declared a criminal organization, leaving The Netherlands to ponder whether or not to prosecute literally thousands of its own citizens who were trying to rebuild, or to let it slide. Mostly, they chose to let it slide, deciding that the social implications of mass prosecution would be more harmful than letting them go.

Such a thing was not uncommon then and certainly isn't now. There are a million dead Iraqis out there, many thousands of them tortured to death and dumped in Iraq's cities, and nobody's being prosecuted for that, either.

[Xicano]

2. "The long arm of the law"

n/t