Austrian Leader Seeks Release of Nazi in Italy
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VIENNA — Austrian Chancellor Fred Sinowatz is seeking the early release from an Italian prison of a former SS colonel sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering a massacre in an Italian village in 1944.
The diplomatic step to free Walter Reder, a 69-year-old Austrian, came two weeks after relatives of victims and survivors of the attack voted 237 to 1 against his early release.
In the massacre in the village of Marzabotto, 1,830 people were killed in an effort to wipe out resistance to German occupation during World War II.
An Italian court sentenced Reder to life imprisonment in 1954, but in 1980 an Italian military court said Reder could be freed July 15, 1985.
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