Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Gestapo chief of Lyons, France,
during the German occupation, is arrested in Bolivia for his crimes against
humanity four decades earlier.
As chief of Nazi Germany’s secret police in occupied France,
Barbie sent thousands of French Jews and French Resistance members to their
deaths in concentration camps, while torturing, abusing, or executing many
others. After the Allied liberation of France, he fled to Germany, where under
an assumed identity he joined other ex-Nazi officials in the formation of an
underground anti-communist organization. In 1947, the U.S. Counter-Intelligence
Corps (CIC) broke up the organization and arrested its senior members, although
Barbie remained at large until the CIC offered him money and protection in exchange
for his cooperation in countering Soviet espionage efforts. Barbie worked as a
U.S. agent in Germany for two years and in 1949 was smuggled to Bolivia, where
he assumed the name of “Klaus Altmann” and continued his work as a U.S. agent.
In addition to his work for the Americans, he performed
services for Bolivia’s various military regimes, especially that of Hugo “El
Petiso” Banzer, who came to power in 1971 and became one of the country’s most
oppressive leaders. Barbie provided a similar expertise for Banzer as he had
for the Nazis, torturing and interrogating political opponents and dispatching
many of them to internment camps, where many were executed or died from
mistreatment. It was at this time that Nazi hunters Serge Klarsfeld and Beatte
Kunzel discovered Barbie’s whereabouts, but Banzer refused to extradite him to
France. In the early 1980s, a liberal regime came to power in Bolivia and
agreed to extradite Barbie in exchange for French aid to the destitute nation.
In January 1983, Barbie was arrested, and he arrived in France on February 7.
Legal wrangling, especially between the groups representing
his Jewish and French Resistance victims, delayed his trial for four years.
Finally, on May 11, 1987, the “Butcher of Lyons,” as he was known in France,
went on trial for 177 crimes against humanity. In a courtroom twist
unimaginable four decades earlier, Barbie was defended by three minority
lawyers–an Asian, an African, and an Arab–who made the dramatic case that the
French and the Jews were as guilty of crimes against humanity as Barbie or any
other Nazi. Barbie’s lawyers were more interested in putting France and Israel
on trial than in actually proving their client’s innocence, and on July 4,
1987, he was found guilty. For his crimes, Klaus Barbie was sentenced to spend
the rest of his life in prison, France’s highest punishment. He died in prison
of cancer on September 25, 1991, at the age of 77.
Source: history.com
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