The Netherlands Government will not further reduce the sentence of Willi Lages, one-time Gestapo chief in Holland who was sentenced to die several years ago for the deportation and subsequent murder of 70,000 Dutch Jews, Minister of Justice Dr. H. Donker, told Parliament late yesterday.
The question of the government’s future attitude toward Lages was raised in Parliament following country-wide protests and demonstrations against the recent commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment. Many Dutch leaders had expressed the fear that in a few years the Lages’ sentence would be reduced again and he would be released to return to Germany.
In response to charges that German intervention might have been responsible for the clemency extended the Nazi, the Minister said that the Germans had not had anything to do with the matter. He stressed that German war criminals in Holland were not considered prisoners of war whose welfare was the concern of the Germans.
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