Such stories can be told again and again and again.
Take Klaus Barbie, butcher of Lyon, who ordered killing 14 000 people. After war he became CIA agent and trained US agents how to torture people.
Germany also used a very "clever" trick to free from any responsibility tens of thousands war criminals using... Rules of the Road regulations [1].
How that was possible?
One, seemingly innocent, change in §50 of the German Criminal code said "If there is no clear, personal connections between the victim and the culprit then in case of victim's death such deed should be treated like an attempt to commit the murder not the murder". Kind of make sense in case of road accidents, but since that was added to Criminal Code, this was also applied to war criminals, because why not, law is the law. Clever, isn't it?
This was a godsend for German war criminals, a those who were giving orders obviously did not have any connection with the victims, so the new law applied. In addition statute of limitations for this offense (attempt of a murder) was just 15 years in Germany. As a result by 1960 all war criminals were free to go.
This law was passed as a initiative Eduard Dreher, who worked in post-war German Ministry of Justice, even though he was a higher-up official in Nazi administration, so he was also very interested in passing this kind of regulation.
> After war he became CIA agent and trained US agents how to torture people
Can you cite a credible reference for this claim? Records indicate that he was hired by the 66th Detachment of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) (source: Wikipedia). But I am unable to find evidence that the CIA hired him to train US agents in torture methods.
and then there was a subtle catch-up game [2] of legislation and prosecution to figure how to still prosecute nazi concentration camp murderers. And they closed the first legal loophole, statutory limitation for murder was extended to 30y and then completely lifted. and they found the loophole of the remaining loophole: they didn't prosecute Nazis for the motive of racism any more (a personal trait), but for the way of killing, "Heimtücke und wehrloses Opfer" (malice aforethought and defenseless victim)
That's why we still see 90+ year old guys in front of German courts, despite all right wing conservative efforts to get them out of jail free.
Take Klaus Barbie, butcher of Lyon, who ordered killing 14 000 people. After war he became CIA agent and trained US agents how to torture people.
Germany also used a very "clever" trick to free from any responsibility tens of thousands war criminals using... Rules of the Road regulations [1].
How that was possible?
One, seemingly innocent, change in §50 of the German Criminal code said "If there is no clear, personal connections between the victim and the culprit then in case of victim's death such deed should be treated like an attempt to commit the murder not the murder". Kind of make sense in case of road accidents, but since that was added to Criminal Code, this was also applied to war criminals, because why not, law is the law. Clever, isn't it?
This was a godsend for German war criminals, a those who were giving orders obviously did not have any connection with the victims, so the new law applied. In addition statute of limitations for this offense (attempt of a murder) was just 15 years in Germany. As a result by 1960 all war criminals were free to go.
This law was passed as a initiative Eduard Dreher, who worked in post-war German Ministry of Justice, even though he was a higher-up official in Nazi administration, so he was also very interested in passing this kind of regulation.
[1] I could not find any English language source, here is the one in Polish - https://twojahistoria.pl/2019/01/31/jak-kodeks-drogowy-pomog... in this extensinve dissertation https://rcin.org.pl/Content/68588/PDF/WA303_86117_A507-DN-R-... there is a detailed biography of German language sources on the subject.