Salon.com > David Rising

Germany accuses Philadelphia man of being Nazi SS guard

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 00:57:00 +0000

BERLIN (AP) — Germany has launched a war crimes investigation against an 87-year-old Philadelphia man it accuses of serving as an SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp, The Associated Press has learned, following years of failed U.S. Justice Department efforts to have the man stripped of his American citizenship and deported.

Johann "Hans" Breyer, a retired toolmaker, admits he was a guard at Auschwitz during World War II, but told the AP he was stationed outside the facility and had nothing to do with the wholesale slaughter of some 1.5 million Jews and others behind the gates.

The special German office that investigates Nazi war crimes has recommended that prosecutors charge him with accessory to murder and extradite him to Germany for trial on suspicion of involvement in the killing of at least 344,000 Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in occupied Poland.

The AP also has obtained documents that raise doubts about Breyer's testimony about the timing of his departure from Auschwitz.

The case is being pursued on the same legal theory used to prosecute late Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk, who died in March while appealing his conviction in Germany on charges he served as a guard at the notorious Sobibor death camp, also in occupied Poland.

European food contamination kills 16, sickens 1150

Tue, 31 May 2011 19:20:00 +0000

A massive and unprecedented outbreak of bacterial infections linked to contaminated vegetables claimed two more lives in Europe on Tuesday, driving the death toll to 16. The number of sick rose to more than 1,150 people in at least eight nations.

Nearly 400 people in Germany were battling a severe and potentially fatal version of the infection that attacks the kidneys. A U.S. expert said doctors had never seen so many cases of the condition, hemolytic uremic syndrome, tied to a foodborne illness outbreak before.

Investigators across Europe were frantically trying to determine how many vegetables were contaminated with enterohaemorrhagic E.coli -- an unusual, toxic strain of the common E. coli bacterium -- and where in the long journey from farm to grocery store the contamination occurred.

The highly politicized mystery over the source of the E. coli contamination deepened in the light of new evidence that two strains of the bacterium may be involved. German officials said they were still looking at Spanish produce but Spain said the discovery was proof its farms were not the source.

Military questions Marine who was missing

Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:37:00 +0000

The U.S. Marine who mysteriously vanished in Iraq and reappeared in Lebanon nearly three weeks later has been cooperating fully with a team of specialists questioning him at a U.S. military hospital in Germany, the supervisor of debriefing told The Associated Press on Monday.

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was being debriefed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center by intelligence specialists, psychologists, physicians and a Muslim chaplain, said Army Lt. Col. Sally Harvey, a clinical neuropsychologist at the hospital who is overseeing the questioning.

"He has fully engaged in the process," Harvey said in a telephone interview from Landstuhl. "His spirits are good and he's participated fully."

Harvey was not permitted to say what Hassoun might have told investigators about his disappearance June 20 from his base near the troubled Iraqi city of Fallujah.

In the three weeks that the 24-year-old was missing, various conflicting reports emerged about him -- first that he was beheaded, then that he was alive. Arab television on June 27 showed a videotape of him with his eyes covered by a white blindfold and a sword hanging over his head.