Mrs. Beate Klarsfeld said today she had information that Martin Bormann, Hitler’s chief aide, is alive, hiding out in the Peruvian jungle, and that he has been in contact with Klaus Barbie-Altmann. Mrs. Klarsfeld, who has been doggedly pursuing Altmann in the belief he is actually Klaus Barbie, a former Gestapo chief and the “Butcher of Lyons,” said Bormann has been living at Cuzco, in southern Peru. He would now be more than 71 years old.
Mrs. Klarsfeld, who returned here today from Bolivia, said that until she visited Peru she had been disappointed by her unsuccessful 10-day attempt to present the Bolivian government with documents concerning the identity of Altmann-Barbie. She was still pessimistic, she said, about French government efforts to have Altmann extradited, because “He enjoys the protection of the Bolivian authorities. He is free to move as he wants and is protected by two bodyguards.”
Mrs. Klarsfeld said Altmann is supported in Bolivia and other Latin American countries by a network of former Nazis. She possessed, she said, precise information on the wealth and influence of the network and on what she described as the association between Altmann and former officers of the Third Reich.
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