The Austrian Justice Ministry said today, in reply to a charge from the Vienna Jewish community that scores of Austrian Nazi war criminals were free in Austria, that the Ministry had taken legal action on every known or reported case of war crimes.
The charge was made at a press conference at which a Jewish community spokesman asserted that Austrian authorities had received the names of 40 to 50 such criminals, all of whom were guilty of multiple murders. One of the names cited at the press conference was that of Franz Murer, who was captured by the British Army and turned over to the Russians who sentenced him to 25 years on charges of responsibility for the slaying of 80,000 Jews in Vilna. The Russians released him in 1955 and he returned to Austria.
The Ministry confirmed that Murer had been free since his returned said that the case against him was regarded by the Austrian authorities as closed in view of the fact that he had served his Russian sentence. The Ministry added that it would determine whether new information against Murer would serve as a basis to investigate him again.
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