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vincentML -> RE: 95 Year old German medic on trial for (9/13/2016 8:28:23 AM)
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ORIGINAL: WhoreMods
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ORIGINAL: vincentML
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ORIGINAL: WhoreMods
Maybe. Still, he's spent the last seventy roaming free, rather than facing any consequences of his actions, so it's hard to feel much sympathy for him if I'm honest.
It seems to me that "roaming free" and "consequences for his actions" are presumptive characterizations by you on the guilt or innocence of a man before his trial has actually begun.
Excellent point.
Of course, given the show trial nature of most of the prosecutions of aging alleged nazis is being found guilty is most likely a given and the trial itself just a token. Having access to his military records and proving that he is who he's suspected to be does provide most of the evidence in these cases. I think that's why the stalling from his defence has been more concerned with health issues than anything else, isn't it?
I did a little wiki research on this and came away with the feeling that these are just show trials, although i fail to understand the motivation.
It appears that the Nuremberg trials did not set the precedent for guilt by association in German courts. Different jurisdictions for one. The precedent was set by the trial of John Demjanjuk in 2011.
German judicial authorities are scrambling to bring the last remaining Nazis to trial, after decades in which many were allowed to escape justice. Of 6,500 SS members who are known to have served at Auschwitz, only 29 were ever brought to trial in Germany. In the former communist East Germany, 20 were prosecuted. Most escaped justice because of the belief that prevailed until recently that anyone who had served under the Nazis had been forced to do so by the regime, and was therefore not guilty.
But following the 2011 trial of John Demjanjuk, a car mechanic from Ohio, US, who was convicted for being a guard without any evidence that he had been directly involved in any killings, a new precedent was set. The same argument was used last year to convict Oskar Gröning, another former Auschwitz guard who was nicknamed the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” because of his responsibility for sorting through the money stolen from prisoners on arrival.
On the eve of Hanning’s trial, Auschwitz survivors held a press conference in which they stressed the importance that the trial was taking place.
READ HERE
I read elsewhere that Demjanjuk was previously tried in Israel where the verdict was overturned due to uncertainty of identity. In his German trial Demjanjuk was confronted by about 20 Jewish survivors as co-plaintiffs and who were allowed to testify about their experiences. A novel process. After his guilty verdict Demjanjuk was free pending appeal. He died during that process.
I have to look back to the irony in the My Lai incident where Lt. Calley was given clemency by a president who was engaged in bombing Cambodia and laying mines in the harbor at Hanoi.
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