Trial of Nazi commander enters final phase in Germany

munich | An 88-year-old former Nazi commander was actively involved in massacres of Slovak civilians at the end of World War II, a prosecutor said this week in closing arguments at his trial.

Capt. Ladislav Niznansky, who has been on trial for 14 months, faces a possible life sentence if convicted of 164 counts of murder in three massacres in early 1945 after a failed uprising against Slovakia's Nazi puppet government.

A former Slovak army captain who at first supported the revolt, Niznansky changed sides after his capture and took charge of the Slovak section of a Nazi unit code-named Edelweiss that hunted resistance fighters and Jews, prosecutor Konstantin Kuchenbauer said.

Though Niznansky has said he was forced into Edelweiss and did not actively participate in its actions, Kuchenbauer pointed out to the court that the defendant earned an Iron Cross 1st Class medal.

"You don't get that for doing nothing," Kuchenbauer said, as Niznansky watched him intently from across the courtroom.

In one of the last trials of surviving Nazi suspects, prosecutors were expected to recommend the maximum sentence for Niznansky.

Defense lawyers argue the prosecution's reliance on testimony from an earlier trial in then-communist Czechoslovakia fatally undermines the case and said they would seek his acquittal. A verdict is expected in December.

In one attack Edelweiss, working with a unit of the elite SS and another unit that included German soldiers and ethnic German irregulars, was tasked to surround the village of Klak and prevent anyone escaping alive, Kuchenbauer said. No effort was made to determine whether partisans were in the village, he said.

"There was no reconnaissance because the plan from the start was to liquidate the village,' he said. "This was a liquidation — an act of terror."

On another occasion, he said, Niznansky set up an execution squad that killed 18 Jewish civilians found hiding in three bunkers.

Slovaks under Niznansky's command made up about half of the 300-strong formation, which also included Germans and Russians. The overall commander was a German officer.

Kuchenbauer said there was evidence that Niznansky not only ordered the killings but also robbed victims and helped hold the unit together until the end of the war.

"He wasn't passive, he prepared the operations and actively carried them out," Kuchenbauer said.

The prosecutor defended his use of statements from a trial in Czechoslovakia in 1962, which convicted Niznansky of the shootings and other killings and sentenced him to death in absentia.

But he acknowledged that several elderly witnesses invited to Munich had denied their 1962 testimony and said there was no firm evidence that Niznansky himself shot any of the victims.

Asked outside the court if he expected to be acquitted, Niznansky said: "Certainly."

"That was a show trial and nothing more," he said of the 1962 conviction.

After the war, Niznansky was sent to Vienna to spy for the communist authorities and then became a double-agent for U.S. intelligence, according to his lawyer Steffen Ufer.

By 1962, Niznansky had moved to Germany where he worked for U.S-financed Radio Free Europe, which broadcast Western programming to the Soviet bloc. Now retired, he became a German citizen in 1996.

German authorities began their investigation in 2001 after a Slovak request, and judges traveled to Slovakia to interview surviving witnesses.

The court released Niznansky from custody in October 2004, citing contradictory testimony from a former Edelweiss member whose evidence helped secure his 1962 conviction.