Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was deeply involved in setting up one of South America's most important drug cartels, according to a report Friday by German news weekly Der Spiegel.
Dubbed the "Butcher of Lyon" for his wartime torture of prisoners, the former Gestapo chief in the occupied French city fled to South America after the end of World War II.
Barbie was eventually arrested after being tracked down by France's most famous Nazi-hunting couple, Serge Klarsfeld and his wife Beate, the BBC reported. He was extradited from Bolivia to France in 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 on charges of crimes against humanity.
Barbie died in prison in 1991.
According to Der Spiegel, Barbie -- living under the alias Klaus Altmann -- became a security adviser to drug baron Roberto Suarez after the two men met in the 1970s.
Suarez's son Gary told the magazine that Barbie was "an important person to my father."
"He knew something about security, military strategy and secret service work," he said.
Barbie was also active in advising the Bolivian security services, helping set up a death squad for dictator Luis Garcia Meza.
Gary Suarez told Der Spiegel that "Barbie had been deeply involved in the military regimes going back decades." (more...)
No comments:
Post a Comment