Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek is returning from a visit to Argentina with a promise from officials there that two Dutch fugitives, tried and convicted of war crimes, will be extradited.
Both of them, Jan Olij and Abraham Kipp, found haven in Argentina after World War II and became citizens.
The authorities assured Van den Broek, who was in Buenos Aires Thursday and Friday, that their citizenship will be revoked.
But the extradition proceedings will take some time, because of legal formalities. The extradition treaty between the two countries, which dates from 1893, has no provisions for war criminals.
Olij, 68, had been employed as a policeman in Argentina and worked for an oil company. He was arrested Dec. 7 in a suburb of Buenos Aires. He is presently in the psychiatric ward of a prison hospital in Buenos Aires.
A Dutch court sentenced Olij to 20 years in prison in July 1949. But he managed to escape to Spain, from where he sailed to Argentina.
Kipp, a policeman during the Nazi occupation of Holland, fled before his trial. He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1949 for the murder of at least 20 persons.
But by then he was in Spain, enroute to Argentina, where he was naturalized in 1953. He has since disappeared from Buenos Aires, where his house is listed for sale.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
