Defence demands acquittal in Tuscany war-crimes case

Jul 3, 2009, 15:06 GMT

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.