Former Nazi officer Erich Priebke, who received a life sentence for his part in a wartime massacre of 335 civilians in Italy, has launched libel actions against a former resistance fighter and an Italian journalist, lawyers said Saturday.
Priebke, 87, who was transferred from prison to house arrest last year on health grounds, is claiming 300 million lire (155,000 euros, 128,000 dollars) in damages from Rosario Bentivegna and journalist Claudio Fracassi.
Priebke is objecting to a passage in Bentivegna's book "Operazione via Rasella", published earlier this year, in which he says Priebke tortured Maurizio Giglio, one of the victims of the notorious Ardeatine Caves massacre.
It was for his role in this massacre, one of the most notorious crimes committed in Italy during World War II, that Priebke was convicted.
In March 1944, Nazi soldiers gunned down 335 civilians, including 75 Jews, in revenge for an attack by the Italian resistance in which 33 SS soldiers were killed.
Bentivegna is one of the resistance fighters who took part in the attack on the SS soldiers.
Priebke is suing Fracassi for his book "Fourth Reich", in which he is accused of having funded a German neo-Nazi movement behind a series of arson attacks on immigrant workers' hostels.
Priebke, accompanied by his lawyer Lorenzo Borre and with a heavy police escort, turned up at the civil court in Rome to lodge his complaint in person.
Addressing Judge Marta Ienzi, he denounced what he called the press campaign to "massacre" him. The case is due to come to trial in February.
The former Nazi German officer was arrested in May 1994 in Argentina and extradited to Italy the following year to face trial with another former Nazi, Karl Hass, 88, for the Ardeatine Caves massacre on March 24, 1944.
Priebke admitted shooting two of the hostages in the back of the head but has never expressed remorse over the massacre. He and Hass insisted they were only obeying orders -- ROME (AFP)
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