Germany's foreign intelligence agency
can keep secret some of its records on Adolf Eichmann, the man known as
the mastermind behind the Nazi Holocaust, a court ruled today.
It
vetoed a bid to open up classified files which would reveal how western
spies knew where the killer of six million Jews had fled to after the
Second World War.
Eichmann
was the chief organiser of the Nazi extermination programme - from his
office at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin he organised the railway
transports that took six million Jews to their deaths.
The
files are also thought to contain details about his spectacular
kidnapping - perhaps even collusion between Israel and West Germany - in
pulling it off.
The
Federal Administrative Court ruled that the intelligence agency was
within its rights to black out passages from files sought by a
journalist.
Thursday's
ruling followed a decision last year in which the court said the Federal
Intelligence Service had to release some material it had previously
kept secret.
Israeli
Mossad agents abducted Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960 and took him to
Jerusalem for trial. Eichmann - in charge of the deportations of Jews
across Europe - was found guilty of war crimes, sentenced to death and
hanged in 1962.
The mass-circulation Bild daily,
whose reporter sued for the files' full release, has reported that West
German intelligence knew as early as 1952 that he was in Argentina.
There
has long been a suspicion in Germany that the post-war Adenauer
government wanted to prevent his capture in case he revealed highly
embarrassing details about the Nazi pasts of high-ranking figures in the
West German government, judiciary and civil service.
Distributing: Nazi leader and war criminal Adolf
Eichmann (second right) smiling while German officers cut a Jewish
prisoner's hair locks in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Architect: From his office at Gestapo
headquarters in Berlin Eichmann organised the railway transports that
took six million Jews to their deaths
In
2006, the CIA released documents showing that it contacted West German
intelligence officers in 1958, claiming it had information that Eichmann
'is reported to have lived in Argentina under the alias 'Clemens' since
1952' - both his correct whereabouts and only a slightly different
alias.
He actually went by the name of Ricardo Klement.
The German intelligence service said
most of the files on Eichmann are 'already public' and only a small
portion still needs to be blacked out. It said that the need to do so
stems from laws on 'protecting state security interests' and data
protection laws.
A
lawyer for Bild said it reserved the right to take the case to Germany's
highest court. Christoph Partsch said in a statement that Germany's
interests would be 'harmed by redacting the files, not by releasing
them.'
War crimes: Adolf Eichmann pictured in the box during his trial at the Jerusalem Supreme Court in Tel Aviv
Fled: The aging cardboard passport used by Adolf
Eichmann. He fled to Argentina in 1950 under the alias as 'Ricardo
Klement' with a passport issued by the Red Cross
Insight: A page from the diary of Adolf Eichmann
- he wrote the lengthy diary in prison after he was nabbed in Argentina
by Israeli secret agents and brought to Israel to stand trial for
crimes against humanity
The documents may also contain information about Eichmann’s abduction and possible cooperation between Israel and Germany.
Attorneys
representing Germany’s intelligence service claim some of the data in
the files was obtained by a foreign intelligence agency and argued that
exposing it could damage ties with intelligence organizations of other
nations.
Eichmann was once interviewed in Buenos Aries during his long years as a fugitive by an extreme neo-Nazi journalist.
In the interview he claimed he would go to his grave a happy man knowing that he had caused the deaths of millions of Jews.
At
his trial he was famously branded the ultimate example of the 'banality
of evil' as he came across as a finicky little bureaucrat with no
conscious; just a man who claimed he was obeying orders from higher
authorities.
Source:
http://www.jewishmail.co.uk/
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