France today deplored American intelligence practices which enabled Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, “the butcher of Lyon,” to evade justice for years.
Government spokesman Max Gallo, however, also praised the frankness of the U.S. Justice Department report by Allan Ryan, Jr., a special assistant in the Department’s criminal division, but condemned the fact that certain U.S. intelligence agencies “had shielded him (Barbie)” and later “enabled him to escape from Europe to Latin America.”
Gallo said that as far as France knew, the American services which had protected Barbie had acted without the consent or even the knowledge of the American government at the time. He confirmed the Ryan report which held U.S. Army intelligence officers directly responsible for slipping Barbie out of Europe but said they had acted on their own.
Barbie, who is now awaiting trial in Lyon on charges of “crimes against humanity,” was returned to France from Bolivia some six months ago. If he is found guilty of the charges he faces a life sentence Gallo said that the main thing now “is that Barbie has at long last been arrested and will be brought to trial on the very site where he committed most of his crimes.”
The French Ministry of Justice is investigating charges that Barbie, who served as Lyon’s gestapo chief from 1942 to 1944, ordered the execution of some 4,000 people and the deportation of 7,000 more, most of whom never returned from the death camps in Eastern Europe.
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