New EU law may shield Boere from war crimes trial

AACHEN, Germany(WJC)–Defense attorneys in the Nazi war crimes trial against Heinrich Boere, 88, in Germany have filed a motion to dismiss the case against him arguing the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty invalidated the case against him. Attorney Gordon Christiansen said treaty, which came into force on 1 December, meant nobody could be prosecuted a second time in a different EU country for the same crime.

Boere, a Dutch-born German national, was tried in absentia in the Netherlands in the late 1940s, but never served his life jail term because Germany does not extradite its own citizens. He has admitted in news interviews that he assassinated three people in 1944 as a member of an SS hit squad during Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945.

The court in the western German city of Aachen halted the trial to consider the objection. The case is one of two big war-crimes trials currently on-going in Germany, the other being that of Ivan Demjanjuk, 89, in Munich.

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress