Dutch Lawmaker Asks Government to Pardon 3 Imprisoned War Criminals

A prominent Calvinist member of the Dutch Senate has asked the government to pardon the last three Nazi war criminals imprisoned in Holland on grounds that their continued confinement no longer serves any purpose.

The request, by Prof. Isaac A. Diepenhorst a member of the law faculty at the Calvinist Free University here, was addressed to Justice Minister Jacob de Ruiter. He petitioned the minister in his capacity of chairman of the interchurch Commission for Judicial Institutions. Diepenhorst belongs to the Calvinist wing of the Christian Democratic Party.

The prisoners, all Germans, are Ferdinand aus der Fuenten, Franz Fischer and Joseph Kotaella, all originally sentenced to death for crimes committed during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Their sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment. In March 1972, a petition, for their release then under consideration by the government, raised a storm of protest and a motion to that effect was defeated in parliament by a vote of 85-61.

Diepenhorst argues that the three men, confined to Breda Prison in southwest Holland for the past 33 years, should be released because punishment has no meaning for prisoners who are old and are no longer fully competent mentally. Organizations of war victims and former resistance fighters said they would oppose his appeal.

Diepenhorst conceded that the release of the three may cause anguish to victims of Nazi crimes. But in his view, irreparable suffering cannot find compensation in punishment imposed by men. He recalled that in the immediate past-war years the Dutch judicial authorities exercised mercy in the cases-of most persons accused of war crimes or collaboration with the enemy. He said that over 100,000 such persons arrested after the war have long since been released, except for 45 who were executed and the three held in Breda.