When the former SS captain Erich Priebke was convicted in Italy in 1997 for his part in the massacre of 335 civilians during World War II many heaved a sigh of relief.
The Nazi war criminal, who had spent the post-war decades at large in the wild expanses of Argentinian Patagonia, was put under house arrest for the rest of his life. Better late than never, they said.
But now, less than seven years later, the wounds of the 1944 slaughter at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome are being reopened as Priebke’s supporters say he has suffered enough and it is time to set the 90-year-old free.
”Every year Priebke is held the life is draining out of him,” said Paolo Giachini, a friend of Priebke who provided the house in Rome where the former Nazi is confined. ”He is old and sick. This treatment is inhumane and degrading.”
Giachini and other Priebke sympathisers argue that his human rights are being abused by Italy, and that he has been used as a scapegoat while his contemporaries have enjoyed freedom in old age.
Giachini had scheduled a rally to be held on Saturday in Rome to campaign for Priebke’s release, but on Friday Rome prefect Achille Serra banned the demonstration, citing public order fears.
Serra argued that two counter-demonstrations that were due to be held nearby meant there were ”foreseeable consequences on public order and security”.
Opponents of Priebke’s release say his sins should not be forgiven.
”It’s incredible that Priebke is seeking mercy when he had no mercy for those he killed,” said Riccardo Pacifici, a spokesperson for Rome’s Jewish community.
”Convicted assassins should end their days in detention.”
Priebke fled to Argentina soon after the war. He was extradited in 1994.
He has admitted he helped to round up the victims on March 24 1944. All 335 were shot in the back of the head in response to an attack by Italian partisans that killed 33 Germans.
Priebke said he personally shot two of them, but was following Hitler’s orders and would have faced the firing squad otherwise.
”This execution was a tragedy for us,” Priebke wrote in Thursday’s Il Giornale, a centre-right newspaper.
”I don’t feel the responsibility to repent for something I didn’t want to do,” he added. ”I was against it. I had to obey, like every soldier must do.” — Guardian Unlimited Â