Dec. 12



ITALY:

Ex - Nazi Officer Acquitted in Italy Massacre Trial


An Italian military court acquitted former Nazi officer Hermann Langer of
a 1944 massacre of some 60 people at a Tuscan monastery, where Jews were
hiding during World War II, the prosecuting attorney said on Saturday.

The ruling, handed down late on Friday, clears perhaps the last surviving
member of the Nazi unit behind the killings on Sept. 2, 1944. Several
children and members of the church were among the dead.

``We're shocked, because (Langer's) specific responsibility emerges from
the hearings and the documentation,'' Enrico Cecchetiti, a regional
government official close to the case, told local media.

Military prosecutor Marco de Paolis, who is leading Italy's probe into
Nazi war crimes, told Reuters he might appeal the case. But De Paolis said
he will wait first to read the court's explanation for the ruling, which
is due within 90 days.

Langer, 85, was tried in absentia and could not be immediately reached for
comment.

Italian officials had been looking for him since 1948, when Nazi second
lieutenant Edoardo Florin, on trial for the massacre, identified Langer as
his superior officer but confused authorities by giving Langer's job title
with his name.

``Hermann Langer after the war worked as a gardener, which in German, is
'Gartner'. So, for years, they were looking for Herman Langer-Gartner,
obviously without any success,'' De Paolis said.

Langer was only found a year and a half ago.

According to recent historical studies, Allied forces had initially wanted
an ``Italian Nuremberg'' after the war, a version of the trials which
involved top Nazi officials in 1945-46.

But the plans were shelved in 1947, and by the late 1940s only a dozen
court martial proceedings were closed.

In August, Germany Interior Minister Otto Schily visited Italy to recall
one of the country's most horrific Nazi massacres on Aug. 12, 1944 when
560 men, women and children in a Tuscan village were shot dead.

Schily called it a ``day of shame in Germany's darkest period.'' The
massacre's youngest victim, Anna Pardini, was 20 days old.

(source: Reuters)