The Argentine government has agreed to consider a request from West Germany that it extradite a German accused of Nazi war crimes who has been living in Argentina since 1948. The German, Eduard Roschmann, allegedly was the commander of a death camp in the Riga area in which 40,000 Jews were killed.
The government had first issued a statement on July 4 which said it “decided to accept the request” from West Germany to extradite Roschmann. But yesterday, a second statement was released saying “the national government has only agreed to give due process” to the request. Police sources said the 69-year-old Roschmann has not been arrested.
According to official sources, Roschmann entered Argentina in 1948 with a passport in the name of Fritz Wegner. During the war, he was in the Riga area first as an SS assault leader, head of the Jewish section of the security police and then commander of the Riga Ghetto. He was tried in absentia in Hamburg and found guilty of multiple murders carried out between 1941 and 1944.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
