Lawyers for convicted Nazi war criminal Lambertus Johannes Loyen may withdraw their appeal to the Supreme Court to void the life sentence recently pronounced on Loyen for crimes committed in the Bobruisk concentration camp for Jews in White Russia in 1942. The reversal of the defense tactics is under consideration in order to preclude Loyen’s extradition to Israel, sources here said.
The appeal asked the Supreme Court to declare the Roermond District Court where Loyen was convicted incompetent. It was based on the fact that Loyen lost his Dutch citizenship by serving in the Nazi SS. His lawyers fear that if their appeal is upheld, Loyen, no longer a citizen, could be extradited. Israel had requested extradition before the trial began.
Pieter Menten, the millionaire art dealer now on trial for alleged war crimes committed when he served with an SS unit in Poland during World War II, also claims that he is no longer a Dutch citizen. But the Swiss government, which returned him to Holland after he fled to avoid arrest last December, did so on the promise of Dutch authorities not to extradite Menten to another country.
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