BERLIN (AP) -– Germany is looking into the possibility of jailing an 88-year-old man who was convicted of Nazi war crimes in the Netherlands more than 60 years ago, the Justice Ministry said Monday. ""The ministry thinks it might be possible to enforce the Dutch sentence in Germany,"" spokesman Ulrich Staudigl said. Former SS member Klaas Carel Faber was convicted on several counts of murder in 1947, but fled to Germany in 1952 and has lived freely in Bavaria for decades.
Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger has asked Bavarian authorities re-examine the case, Staudigl said.
However, Bavarian prosecutors in Ingolstadt and Munich who have dealt with the case told The Associated Press that, without new evidence or a renewed request for help by the Netherlands, no action can be taken.
""Judging from current knowledge, we have no option to do anything,"" said Helmut Walter of the prosecutor's office in Ingolstadt, where Faber lives.
Likewise, Munich prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said the evidence currently available is not enough to reopen the case.
Faber, who was born in 1922, is currently number 5 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's ""most wanted Nazi war criminals."" The Wiesenthal Center, based in Los Angeles, works to hunt down Nazi criminals and fight anti-Semitism.
According to the Center, Faber volunteered for Hitler's SS, a paramilitary organization loyal to Nazi ideology, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in the 1940s.
In 1947, a Dutch court sentenced Faber to death on at least 11 counts of murder as a member of an execution squad that killed Dutch resistance members, Nazi opponents, and people who hid Jews, Zuroff said. The sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1948. Faber escaped to Germany in 1952.