Barbie’s Trial Delayed Until Early in ’86

Court officials, faced with conflicting lists of victims’ names, ordered further investigation today into the wartime activities of Klaus Barbie, delaying the opening of the imprisoned Nazi criminal’s trial until at least the start of next year.

Legal officials said prosecutors ordered the delay after examining new documents concerning the final group of Jews deported to Nazi concentration camps from the southeastern city of Lyon, where Barbie was a Gestapo officer.

The documents, found in government archives, contained a list of names of Jews deported in an Aug. 11, 1944, convoy to Nazi death camps.

But officials said the list differs from one supplied to the prosecution by Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld.

Klarsfeld, whose wife, Beate, unmasked Barbie in his Bolivian hide-out in 1982, represents one of a number of groups launching civil cases against the former Nazi.

Submission of the new documents to all parties concerned, including Barbie himself, required postponement of the trial until the beginning of next year, officials said.

Details of the deportation of Jews to Nazi concentration camps have become the focus of Barbie’s trial since investigating judge Christian Riss reduced to three the number of charges on which the so-called “Butcher of Lyon” is to be tried.