Okla-homey
1/19/2006, 06:44 AM
January 19, 1983: the "Butcher of Lyons" is arrested in Bolivia
On this day, 23 years ago, Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Reich's Geheime Staatspolizei (AKA "Gestapo") chief of Lyons, France, during the German occupation, is arrested in Bolivia for his crimes against humanity four decades earlier. This is a wild story so hang in there.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/9554/klausgerbarbie6vo.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
As chief of Nazi Germany's secret police in occupied France, Barbie sent hundreds of thousands of French Jews and French Resistance members to their deaths in concentration camps, while torturing, abusing, or executing many others.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5868/klausbarbiemateria2lh.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
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.
The CIC wanted him because he possessed a stack of dossiers he had swiped from Reich file cabinets on his way out. Immediately after fighting in Europe had ceased, the US lept headlong into the Cold War against the USSR and nobody hated communism more than the Nazis. In the Gestapo file safes they kept detailed records on known Soviet agents and their methods. In no time at all, Barbie was on the US payroll (at $50 a month).
Two years later, the situation had become too hot for Barbie in U.S.-occupied Bavaria. France was making noises about prosecuting him for war crimes, and repeatedly asked that American forces extradite him. For some inexplicable reason, the French seemed completely obsessed with the guy.;)
This posed a dilemma for the CIC. To begin with, the Army did not necessarily believe the French war crime allegations. More importantly to them, Barbie had learned a lot about U.S. intelligence targets and methodologies (even though he hadn't produced much in terms of worthwhile intelligence). One analyst put it this way:
To have exposed BARBIE to interrogation and public trial would not have been in consonance with accepted clandestine intelligence operational doctrine. ... he was knowledgeable of high level operations and operational procedures, which would have been compromised.
So what are you supposed to do with an ex-Nazi mass murderer spy who knows too much? In particular, an ex-Nazi wanted for war crimes by one of your allies? When confronted with this decision, Barbie's US intelligence handlers realized that they had no option but to have him killed.
Just kidding! After all, if there's one thing the intelligence community is known for, it's personal loyalty. So, in 1951, the CIA did the only honorable thing and smuggled him out of Europe, through the "Rat Line" to South America. It was completely illegal, but sometimes you've got to break international law to maintain a friendship.
In 1954 the French tried Barbie in absentia and convicted him of torture and murder. Meanwhile, Barbie had settled comfortably under an assumed name in Nazi-tolerant Bolivia. Living as "Klaus Altmann," Barbie eventually found work managing operations of Transmaritima Boliviana, an international shipping firm. He even made a couple of business trips to the U.S. on behalf of TMB. Nobody from the U.S. government ever bothered him.
He must have gotten pretty cocky by 1974, when he granted an interview to journalist Alfredo Serra in La Paz. When asked whether he was proud of his wartime activities, Barbie replied:
"Of course I am proud of what I did during the war. If it hadn't been for me, France would be a Soviet Socialist Republic by now."
Things got even more comfy for Barbie after he helped overthrow the Bolivian government, in the "Cocaine Coup" of July 1970. The junta had been partially funded with a $4 million contribution from ardent anti-Communist Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Korean founder of the "Unification Church" (AKA the "Moonies.") :eek:
Once the drug lords took power, all the fascists came crawling out of the woodwork. Barbie joined the new regime in a quasi-offical capacity under his assumed name of "Klaus Altmann" and lent them his years of experience in torture and repression. At his direction, critics and political dissidents were rounded up and made to vanish.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5607/klausbarbieboliviacard3bj.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
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.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5016/klausbanzer2ui.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Barbie's last Bolivian jefe, Presidente Banzer, AKA "El Petiso"...actually, an arsehole grande
Barbie provided a similar expertise for Banzer as he had for the Nazis, and previous Bolivian regimes, 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 French Jewish Nazi hunters Serge Klarsfeld and Beatte Kunzel discovered Barbie's whereabouts, but Banzer refused to extradite his monster to France. In the early 1980s, a liberal regime overthrew Banzer and 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.
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/3453/klausbarbietrial4pw.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
The Butcher on trial in Paris.
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, all Muslims -- 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 5, 1987, he was found guilty.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/4536/klausbarbieverdict2hx.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
For his crimes, Klaus Barbie was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, France's highest punishment. He died in prison in 1991, having served less than five years in relatively comfortable surroundings. There are theories that Mossad got to him in the French prison and hastened his death, but, that's just rumor.;)
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/2899/insane7zo8ms.jpg
On this day, 23 years ago, Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Reich's Geheime Staatspolizei (AKA "Gestapo") chief of Lyons, France, during the German occupation, is arrested in Bolivia for his crimes against humanity four decades earlier. This is a wild story so hang in there.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/9554/klausgerbarbie6vo.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
As chief of Nazi Germany's secret police in occupied France, Barbie sent hundreds of thousands of French Jews and French Resistance members to their deaths in concentration camps, while torturing, abusing, or executing many others.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5868/klausbarbiemateria2lh.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
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.
The CIC wanted him because he possessed a stack of dossiers he had swiped from Reich file cabinets on his way out. Immediately after fighting in Europe had ceased, the US lept headlong into the Cold War against the USSR and nobody hated communism more than the Nazis. In the Gestapo file safes they kept detailed records on known Soviet agents and their methods. In no time at all, Barbie was on the US payroll (at $50 a month).
Two years later, the situation had become too hot for Barbie in U.S.-occupied Bavaria. France was making noises about prosecuting him for war crimes, and repeatedly asked that American forces extradite him. For some inexplicable reason, the French seemed completely obsessed with the guy.;)
This posed a dilemma for the CIC. To begin with, the Army did not necessarily believe the French war crime allegations. More importantly to them, Barbie had learned a lot about U.S. intelligence targets and methodologies (even though he hadn't produced much in terms of worthwhile intelligence). One analyst put it this way:
To have exposed BARBIE to interrogation and public trial would not have been in consonance with accepted clandestine intelligence operational doctrine. ... he was knowledgeable of high level operations and operational procedures, which would have been compromised.
So what are you supposed to do with an ex-Nazi mass murderer spy who knows too much? In particular, an ex-Nazi wanted for war crimes by one of your allies? When confronted with this decision, Barbie's US intelligence handlers realized that they had no option but to have him killed.
Just kidding! After all, if there's one thing the intelligence community is known for, it's personal loyalty. So, in 1951, the CIA did the only honorable thing and smuggled him out of Europe, through the "Rat Line" to South America. It was completely illegal, but sometimes you've got to break international law to maintain a friendship.
In 1954 the French tried Barbie in absentia and convicted him of torture and murder. Meanwhile, Barbie had settled comfortably under an assumed name in Nazi-tolerant Bolivia. Living as "Klaus Altmann," Barbie eventually found work managing operations of Transmaritima Boliviana, an international shipping firm. He even made a couple of business trips to the U.S. on behalf of TMB. Nobody from the U.S. government ever bothered him.
He must have gotten pretty cocky by 1974, when he granted an interview to journalist Alfredo Serra in La Paz. When asked whether he was proud of his wartime activities, Barbie replied:
"Of course I am proud of what I did during the war. If it hadn't been for me, France would be a Soviet Socialist Republic by now."
Things got even more comfy for Barbie after he helped overthrow the Bolivian government, in the "Cocaine Coup" of July 1970. The junta had been partially funded with a $4 million contribution from ardent anti-Communist Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Korean founder of the "Unification Church" (AKA the "Moonies.") :eek:
Once the drug lords took power, all the fascists came crawling out of the woodwork. Barbie joined the new regime in a quasi-offical capacity under his assumed name of "Klaus Altmann" and lent them his years of experience in torture and repression. At his direction, critics and political dissidents were rounded up and made to vanish.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5607/klausbarbieboliviacard3bj.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
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.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5016/klausbanzer2ui.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Barbie's last Bolivian jefe, Presidente Banzer, AKA "El Petiso"...actually, an arsehole grande
Barbie provided a similar expertise for Banzer as he had for the Nazis, and previous Bolivian regimes, 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 French Jewish Nazi hunters Serge Klarsfeld and Beatte Kunzel discovered Barbie's whereabouts, but Banzer refused to extradite his monster to France. In the early 1980s, a liberal regime overthrew Banzer and 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.
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/3453/klausbarbietrial4pw.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
The Butcher on trial in Paris.
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, all Muslims -- 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 5, 1987, he was found guilty.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/4536/klausbarbieverdict2hx.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
For his crimes, Klaus Barbie was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, France's highest punishment. He died in prison in 1991, having served less than five years in relatively comfortable surroundings. There are theories that Mossad got to him in the French prison and hastened his death, but, that's just rumor.;)
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/2899/insane7zo8ms.jpg