Unclear When Nazi Suspect Could Be Extradited From U.S.

It’s too early to tell when an 89-year-old Nazi war crimes suspect could be extradited from the U.S. to Germany for trial, Bavarian prosecutors said Friday.

Gerd Schaefer, the lead prosecutor in the town of Weiden, whose office is leading the investigation, said Johann Breyer will have the opportunity to fight the extradition request in the U.S. before he can be sent overseas.

The next scheduled U.S. court hearing is in two months.

Breyer was arrested Tuesday at his Philadelphia home on a German warrant and ordered held without bail.

The warrant accuses Breyer of 158 counts of accessory to murder — one count for each trainload of victims brought to Auschwitz from May to October 1944, when he was allegedly a guard there.

Some 216,000 people were brought to Auschwitz on the 158 transports and killed, but Schaefer said his office decided to consider each trainload as a single count. Germany doesn’t allow consecutive sentences for multiple counts of the same crime, so the possible maximum punishment of 15 years in prison could not be increased, he said.

Weiden’s warrant was issued a year ago. Schaefer said the arrest was delayed because of the complexity of the extradition request.

U.S. authorities in November asked Germany for information on “a large number of points”; those questions had to be answered before he could be arrested, he said.

This article appeared in print on page 3 of the June 23rd, 2014 edition of Hamodia.