Court orders new war-crimes trial

Press, 31 May 1978, Page 9

Court orders new war-crimes trial

NZPA-Reuter The Hague The Dutch Supreme Court Las quashed the conviction of a millionaire art collector,; Pieter Menten. on war: crimes charges and ordered t a retrial. Menten, who is 79, was) sentenced to 15 years in prison by an Amsterdam; court last December after an eight-monlh trial under special war crimes laws in] the Netherlands. He was found guilty of involvement in the mass execution of 28 Polish Jews in the village of Podgorodtsy in July, 1941. But the court acquitted him of taking part in another massacre in the nearby village of Urich in August. 1941. The silver-haired Dutchman, a diabetic, denied the charges, which he said were a plot against him by Soviet security authorities. The Supreme Court ruled that the judges who tried Menten last year had not sufficiently looked into the question of whether he had! been tried before for the; same offences. Menten was prosecuted ini the Netherlands after the! Second World War for his! wartime activities. In 1949:

war crimes charges against him were dropped, but he served an eight-month sentence for collaborating with the enemy. Menten was promised in a letter from the Dutch Justice Minister in 1952 that he would not be prosecuted again in connection with the years he spent in Poland. The Supreme Court said that it could be of vital importance if any documents relating to the decision by the then Justice Minister were produced in court, which did not happen in last year’s trial. The court also ruled that the Amsterdam court had failed to take a decision on a request by Menten's lawyer to hear three Dutch witnesses, who were former members of the Nazi S.S. organisation. The lawyer, Leo van Hijningen, said that Menten, who was in court for the appeal decision, would remain in custody at Scheveningen prison hospital, near The Hague, where he has received treatment since his arrest in December, 1976. He said the new trial i would probably begin before a special court in The Hague

in about three months time. Menten had escaped to Switzerland in November, 1976, just before the police called at his luxury villa at Blaricum, south of Amsterdam, with a warrant for his arrest. He was arrested by the Swiss police while staying at a hotel with his wife, Meta, and later extradited back to the Netherlands. His escape caused a crisis in the Government and seriously embarrassed justice minister now Prime Minister (Mr Andreas van Agt). In angry debates, both the Government and Opposition parties blamed Mr van Agt for allowing Menten to flee the country only hours before he was due to be called in for questioning. A subsequent inquiry failed to establish whether Menten had been tipped off about his imminent arrest. Menten lived in eastern Poland as a wealthy businessman and landowner before World War 11. After the Nazi invasion of Russia in June, 1941, he attached himself to a German S.S. unit as an interpreter in the Lvov area, now part of the Soviet Ukraine.