The United States on Saturday extradited to Germany a 95-year-old former concentration camp guard accused of being an accessory to murder, the German prosecutor’s office disclosed on Saturday.
German national Friedrich Karl Berger left the U.S. state of Tennessee on a medical flight and arrived late Saturday morning at Frankfurt Airport, where he was scheduled to be questioned by investigators. This is mainly to see if he is in a position to “speak on these facts,” a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Celle, Lower Saxony, told French news agency AFP.
Despite his advanced age, he was reportedly in good health and able to undergo questioning.
While being interrogated in the United States, Berger admitted that he had been a guard at Neuengamme Camp near Hamburg in 1945, the German weekly, Der Spiegel, reported.
However, he said he’d never been aware of the atrocities committed on prisoners or of deaths among them, and that he had only obeyed orders.
It was uncertain whether he would, in fact, be tried in Germany, especially since the prosecutor’s office in Celle dropped charges against him in December due to insufficient evidence.
The Brussels Times
