A French prosecutor today demanded a sentence of 20 years at hard labor for Otto Abetz, former Nazi envoy to Vichy, who is being tried by a military tribunal here for war crimes, including complicity in the deportation of 40,000 Jews to death camps in Poland and looting of Jewish property in France.
Labelling the Nazi envoy a “looter and a policeman–a Nazi policeman,” the prosecutor asserted that Abetz was clearly responsible for the looting of Jewish belongings in France, mass deportations of Jews and Frenchmen and proposals to shoot Georges Mandel, former French Minister of Interior, and Leon Blum, both Jews, and other French Government officials. The prosecutor said that Abetz knew what was going on, and that he actually egged on the Vichyites.
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