Austrian Official Censured for Meeting Freed Nazi

Austrian Chancellor Fred Sinowatz publicly censured his defense minister Friday for meeting and escorting a returning Nazi war criminal freed from an Italian prison.

Sinowatz called the meeting with Walter Reder, a former SS (elite guard) officer convicted of leading a 1944 massacre of hundreds of Italians, a “serious political mistake.” He said he was dissociating himself from the actions of the minister, Friedhelm Frischenschlager.

Frischenschlager said the reason he went to Graz military airport on Thursday to meet the returning Reder was to ensure the secrecy of the former German army major’s return, according to an interview in the newspaper Kurier.

Austrian officials said both Italy and Austria decided to keep Reder’s release confidential out of concern that it would generate mass protests in both countries.

Reder was imprisoned in 1954 for leading the massacre in the northern Italian village of Marzabotto during World War II. Surviving villagers say 1,830 of their relatives and fellow citizens were slain on Reder’s orders.

He suffers from several ailments and was released early at the request of the Austrian government.

He had been sentenced to life in prison for the massacre, carried out in retaliation for attacks on German soldiers by partisans. In 1980, a court had said the 69-year-old Reder could be released July 15, but because of his illness the government sought early release on humanitarian grounds.

The defense minister met Reder as he arrived in his native land from Italy and accompanied him to nearby Baden. Reder remained there in seclusion on Friday.

Frischenschlager’s action strained Sinowatz’s governing coalition. The chancellor is a member of the Socialist Party, and his defense minister is a member of the coalition’s conservative Freedom Party.