Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, now awaiting trial in France for “crimes against humanity” committed while he headed a Gestapo unit in Lyon from 1942 to 1944, was yesterday moved to a new prison in the center of the city.
Police said he was moved from Montluc prison, where he detained thousands of Jews and local resistance fighters while he headed the gestapo, to another prison for security reasons. In his new prison cell, at the St. Joseph House for Detention, he will be in a separate wing, away from other prisoners.
While a reportedly unrepentant Barbie languished in his cell, French television broadcast today an interview he gave to two Bolivian reporters while on his way from La Paz to France last week. The Bolivian reporters said Barbie started out from La Paz calm. and self-confident. “He thought at the time that he was being taken to West Germany,” reporter Carlos Soria said. “He became agitated and despondent, however, when he landed in French Guyana and first learned that he was being taken back to France.”
The Bolivian reporters said Barbie showed no remorse during his flight, but anger and exasperation. Several times he muttered, “The vanquished are doomed. If Germany had won the war my case would no longer exist.”
Barbie, who had lived for close to 30 years in Bolivia under the name of Klaus Altmann, was twice sentenced in France to death in absentia for his war crimes. He now risks life imprisonment if found guilty. His war-time crimes earned Barbie the name of “the butcher of Lyon.”
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