Kappler likely to stay in Germany

Press, 19 August 1977, Page 6

Kappler likely to stay in Germany

NZPA-Reuter Bonn Italy’s request for the extradition of the escaped Nazi war criminal, Herbert Kappler, is on its way to the West German Foreign Ministry, in Bonn, but its chances of success seem slight. The request was transmitted from Rome on Wednesday, but West German Government officials said yesterday it had not yet been received. Italy is apparently hoping that West Germany will bypass article 16 of its constitution forbidding extradition of its subjects and hand back the ailing former S.S. colonel under a 1957 European extradition treaty.

“We may not have very solid legal grounds, but we have a powerful moral and political case,” one Italian Government official said in Rome.

Kappler aged 70, who was serving a life sentence for war crimes including the 1944 reprisal massacre of 335 Italians, was believed to have been smuggled out of a Rome military hospital by his wife in a big suitcase. He is reported to be dying of intestinal cancer.

The couple is widely believed to be in Mrs Kappler’s flat in Soltau, West Germany, but there has been no official West German statement on their whereabouts. The newspaper “Bild Zeitung,” In a telephone interview published yesterday quoted Mrs Kappler as saying she had engineered his escape “without any outside helo.” She said she had freed him because he had wanted to commit suicide, adding that “his will to live was broken.” The newspaper did not say where it had contacted her.