Munich - Defence lawyers demanded Friday an acquittal at the
Munich trial of Josef Scheungraber, 90, a former German army
lieutenant accused of an atrocity in the Tuscan village of Falzano di
Cortona in 1944.
They said it was not proved that Scheungraber, who has been
convicted in absentia in Italy, had ordered the massacre of 14
villagers in reprisal for the killing of two German soldiers.
'Absolutely nothing can construed that indicates the defendant is
personally guilty,' said counsel Christian Stuenkel as the war crimes
trial neared its end after 10 months.
'The mere fact that he was in a certain military unit proves
nothing,' he added. 'We have the fact that people were herded into a
house and it was blown up. Aside from that, everything else is pure
supposition.'
The court earlier heard Scheungraber led the 818th battalion of
the German Army mountain combat engineers. Two of the unit's men were
ambushed and killed when they tried to requisition a horse from a
Falzano farm.
Witnesses say German troops then rampaged and shot dead four
civilians. On June 27, 1944, 11 men were locked in the house that was
dynamited. Only one survived.
Stuenkel added that memories were unreliable: 'Testimony about
events 65 years ago must be much more carefully assessed than that
about events half a year ago.'
Klaus Goebel, another lawyer defending Scheungraber, contended
that the trial was invalid because of the 2006 Italian conviction and
demanded the trial be called off because the accused faced double
jeopardy.
A third defence lawyer sought to convince the court that it was
impossible that the combat engineers could have been involved in a
shooting.
He said the engineers had no infantry tasks, but the sole role of
repairing infrastructure to secure the German Army's 1944 retreat or
to blow up any means of advance by 'the enemy.'
The court adjourned to July 16, but it remained uncertain if a
verdict would be handed down that day.
USA
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