Priebke lawyer says burial location has been approved
(ANSA) – Rome, October 21 – Authorities have approved a secret burial location for Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke, possibly in Italy or his native Germany, according to his lawyer.
A “small ceremony for his relatives” is planned, said Paolo Giachini, representative for the 100-year-old former SS officer who died earlier this month while living under Rome house arrest for the reprisal killing of 335 Roman men and boys in 1944.
“Everything is solved,” he said.
Priebke’s body was moved last week to a military airport in Rome for public-order reasons after a funeral at the headquarters of an ultra-traditionalist breakaway Catholic group outside Rome was aborted last Tuesday following clashes between residents and neo-Nazis.
Meanwhile, Giachini and Priebke’s family have complained that Rome’s Jewish community wants to treat Priebke “like Osama Bin Laden” by denying him a proper funeral in a site where his mourners can grieve.
“They wanted him to end up like Bin Laden,” whose cremated remains were scattered at sea to avoid creating a shrine to the terrorist behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
His family weighed in on the weekend.
“There was too much fury against our father, we are upset by what has happened,” wrote Jorge and Ingo Priebke in a letter to Rome, Giuseppe Pecoraro.
Priebke was unrepentant until the end of his life.
His lawyer released parts of a so-called ‘video-testament’ Thursday in which Priebke reiterated he had been following orders and said the resistance fighters who killed 33 SS police in Rome the day before the massacre “knew” what the consequences would be.
Priebke called his testament “Woe to the Vanquished” and said the mass killing was “terrible” for the SS officers involved.