The extradition of Franz Stangl, wartime commander of two Nazi death camps in Poland, to face trial in West Germany on murder and genocide charges was approved unanimously last night by the Brazilian Supreme Court.
The court heard arguments from attorneys for three countries seeking to try Stangl, a former SS major who commanded Treblinka and Sobibor. The others were Austria and Poland. In accepting the West German arguments, the court received a promise that if charges against Stangl in West Germany did not produce a guilty verdict, he would be extradited to Austria for trial there.
Following some diplomatic formalities, the 59-year-old Nazi will be taken to Dusseldorf to face charges. In addition to 23 charges of individual murders, he was accused of responsibility for the murder of 400,000 Polish Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto at Treblinka, where he was commander from August 1942 to August 1943.
Stangl was arrested in Sao Paulo last February after eluding Austrian authorities for 19 years. He had lived quietly in Brazil since 1951. The three-nation struggle stemmed from the fact that Stangl was Austrian-born, took his orders from the Nazi high command in Germany and performed his extermination duties in occupied Poland.
George Tavares, the attorney for Austria, contended that Stangl was still an Austrian citizen and should therefore be judged by Austria. The Austrian petition charged that Stangl also had directed a small extermination unit at Hartsheim in Austria, where mental defectives, incurably ill persons and some Mathausen death camp inmates were murdered by injections.
Alfred Tranjan, the attorney for Poland, said Stangl should be tried by the country where he committed his crimes. He said this procedure was specified in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements. Evaristo de Moraes, a leading Brazilian attorney, presented the case for West Germany. He argued that since both Austria and Poland were under German occupation at the time, West Germany should try Stangl.
Prof. Xavier de Albuquerque of Brasilia University, the defense attorney, argued that all three petitions for Stangl’s extradition were invalid because the 20-year statute of limitations on homicide had run out on all the charges. Stangl was not required to appear in court for the hearing. He has been under maximum security detention since his arrest.
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