Italian judge suspends ex-Nazi's work permit

An Italian military judge has suspended a work-release permit for a former Nazi SS captain convicted for his role in a 1944 massacre, court officials said today.

The decision followed protests by the families of those murdered, politicians and Jewish groups.

Erich Priebke was granted permission last month to leave the Rome apartment where he is serving a life sentence to work as a translator at his lawyer’s office in the Italian capital.

The 93-year-old Priebke was photographed yesterday on the back of a motorbike being driven to the lawyer’s office. Dozens of Rome Jews, some of them survivors of Nazi camps, shouted “Murderer!” from the street outside the office.

Defence Minister Arturo Parisi summoned the chief military prosecutor yesterday for an explanation after the outcry, the ministry said. Hours later a judge ordered the work permit suspended, saying that Priebke had failed to inform authorities when he was going to work and how, court officials said.

Priebke has been in prison or under house arrest since he was extradited to Italy in 1994 from Argentina, where had a been a school principal.

He was convicted of war crimes three years later for his role in the massacre of 335 civilians at the Ardeatine Caves on the outskirts of Rome. He admitted shooting two people and helping round up the victims, but has always insisted he was just following orders.

Priebke’s lawyer, Paolo Giachini, said he has not yet decided whether to appeal. Italian law affords such benefits as daytime work-release to convicts after 10 years in jail as a reward for good behaviour.

Justice Minister Clemente Mastella told news agency ANSA that the judge “had made the right decision”.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said the group was pleased the permission had been revoked.

“We believe very strongly that people like Priebke do not deserve any sympathy and privileges. We hope that a way will be found to prevent him from getting any such privileges in the future,” Zuroff said.

Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni and families of the victims had been dismayed by the permission and had noted that Priebke has expressed no public remorse for the massacre. Since last week banners protesting the decision have been hanging from buildings in the Ghetto, the former Jewish quarter where many of the city’s Jews still live.

The Ardeatine massacre occurred in Nazi-occupied Rome on March 24, 1944, in retaliation for an attack by Italian resistance fighters that killed 33 members of a Nazi military police unit.

The Nazis decided to kill 10 Italians for every dead German. They rounded up political prisoners, taking 75 Jews as well as criminals from jails and residents from near the site of the attack on the Nazis. They rounded up five more men than the 330 they sought and killed them all in the abandoned quarry outside Rome.