A group of 300 Austrians, including several public figures, filed formal charges against President Kurt Waldheim with the district attorney of Vienna Tuesday.
They accuse the former United Nations secretary general of murder or complicity in murder when he was an officer in the German army in the Balkans during World War II.
The charges are based on documents from the Yugoslavian military archives relating to mass deportations from the Kozara region in 1942 and documents involving Waldheim in the deportation of Greek Jews from Rhodes and other Greek islands.
They are further based on the report submitted to Chancellor Franz Vranitsky Feb. 8 by an international commission of historians that investigated Waldheim’s wartime activities, and on subsequent statements by a West German member of the panel, Manfred Messerschmidt.
The signatories include well-known artists and intellectuals, among them poct Erich Fried and writer Robert Jungk. They asked the district attorney to search for surviving victims and their children who might join in legal proceedings against Waldheim.
The Yugoslavian documents refer to Waldheim’s service in a supply unit serving in Yugoslavia in 1942, tying him to the deportations.
The deportation of Greek Jews had been recommended by Waldheim’s unit. Although his signature is on none of the deportation orders, Waldheim’s accusers cite a book by the Swiss journalist Hans-Peter Born who maintained that Waldheim regularly sat in on daily headquarters staff meetings during which important decisions were planned and prepared.
The charges also quote extensively from the report of the historians’ commission about the involvement of Waldheim’s unit in the deportation of prisoners and refugees from Yugoslavia and in the “special treatment” leading to the execution of captured Allied commandos.
In that connection, Messerschmidt was quoted in the Munich newspaper Sueddeutche Zeitung as saying Waldheim may have assisted in the commission of murder in the case of captured British commandos.
One section of the historians’ report, cited in the charges, says that Waldheim cooperated in unlawful actions and made their executions easier. The group filing the charges said this raises suspicion that Waldheim assisted in the commission of murder.
The report as a whole found no proof that Waldheim committed war crimes, but it charged he was well aware of atrocities committed by his unit but did not intervene or protest.
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