U.S. Wants to Question Barbie

The U.S. Department of Justice wants to interrogate Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, now awaiting trial in Lyon, France. The French Justice Ministry said today it has received a formal request from Alan Ryan Jr., head of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI).

Justice Ministry sources said they wanted a list of questions or at least subjects of the interrogation before granting the request. The U.S. apparently wants to question Barbie about his wartime activities as gestapo chief in Lyon and his activities in Germany after the war. Barbie allegedly was employed by U.S. intelligence agencies after the war which helped facilitate his escape to Bolivia. He was twice tried in absentia by French courts and sentenced to death.

Barbie is to go on trial for crimes against humanity which include the deportation of French Jews to Nazi death camps. The investigating magistrate, Christian Riss, is expected to formally reject this week Barbie’s appeal for release on grounds that France used illegal methods to gain jurisdiction over him. He was expelled from Bolivia last year and turned over to French authorities. He had lived in the South American country since the early 1950s under the alias, Klaus Altmann.

Justice Ministry sources said Riss is still drafting his legal writ but has already informed the Ministry that he intends to keep Barbie in prison for the duration of legal proceedings.

Meanwhile, the Federation of Former French Resistance Fighters, holding its annual congress in Nice, asked Parliament to pass legislation allowing it to film Barbie’s trial for “historic purposes.” The Federation also passed a resolution calling for some of the trial proceedings to be broadcast “in order to inform France’s younger generation of the horrors of the past.”