Pioneering folk guitarist dies following two-year battle with cancer Bert Jansch, a leading figure in the British folk revival of the 60s and one of the most respected musicians of his generation, has died aged 67 following a long battle with cancer. A founding member of Pentangle, Jansch was also renowned as a guitar virtuoso and was sometimes hailed as a British Bob Dylan. Born in Glasgow on 3 November 1943, he released 23 solo albums, the last of which, The Black Swan (2006), featured collaborations with Beth Orton and Devendra Banhart. Jansch was the recipient of two lifetime achievement prizes at the BBC Folk awards – one for his solo achievements in 2001 and the other, in 2007, as a member of Pentangle. The band reformed in 2008. In June 2009, he discovered he had a golf ball-size tumour on one of his lungs following what was at first a routine visit to the dentist. Following treatment, he went on to co-headline a US tour with Neil Young. Jansch had recently been forced to cancel a live show in Edinburgh due to ill health and was living in a hospice in north London at the time of his death. Those he influenced included Jimmy Page, Nick Drake, Graham Coxon, Donovan, Bernard Butler and Paul Simon. According to fellow guitarist Johnny Marr: “He completely reinvented guitar playing and set a standard that is still unequalled today … without Bert Jansch, rock music as it developed in the 60s and 70s would have been very different.” Jansch told this newspaper last year : “I’m not one for showing off. But I guess my guitar-playing sticks out.” Bert Jansch Pentangle Folk music Caspar Llewellyn Smith guardian.co.uk
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Damien Fowkes to serve 20 years for attempting to murder the Soham killer and manslaughter of child murderer Colin Hatch A psychopathic prisoner who slashed Soham murderer Ian Huntley across the neck with a makeshift knife has been jailed for life. Damien Fowkes, 36, was ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years for attempting to murder Huntley and for the manslaughter of child killer Colin Hatch in a separate attack. Fowkes, who is serving a life sentence for armed robbery, admitted at Hull crown court on Tuesday that he tried to kill Huntley at Frankland prison, Durham, in March 2010. He also admitted to the manslaughter of Hatch, whom he strangled with ligatures torn from bed sheets, at Full Sutton prison, near York, in February. The wound to Huntley’s neck required 21 stitches, and Fowkes asked prison officers if his victim had died and expressed regret that he had not. Fowkes was initially charged with Hatch’s murder, but his plea of guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility was accepted by the court. The judge Mr Justice Coulson expressed concern about the attacks within high-security prisons, especially in the light of another death of a prisoner at Frankland in recent days. He added: “While everyone is acutely aware of the costs of monitoring vulnerable and high-risk prisoners, from what I have seen in this case it appears that the management systems currently in place require urgent review.” The court had been told that Fowkes has strong psychopathic tendencies and a particular hatred of child killers. Hatch had a string of convictions from the age of 15 for assaulting young boys before he was jailed for the murder of seven-year-old Sean Williams in Finchley, north London, in January 1994. In the attack on Huntley, Fowkes targeted the Soham killer after he finished his shift as a cleaner. Huntley is serving a life sentence for the murders of Jessica Wells and Holly Chapman, both 10, in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 2002. Graham Reeds, prosecuting, said: “The first Huntley knew of the attack was when the defendant approached him without any warning at all and slashed his neck with a home-made weapon.” It was fashioned from a razor that was melted on to the handle of a plastic knife or other utensil. The court then heard that Fowkes chased Huntley, trying to stab him again. “He tried several times to stab or slash Huntley in the chest but Huntley managed to get away,” it was told. Evidence from Huntley’s bloodstained shirt showed that “two blows were struck, one to the neck and one to the chest.” A prison officer arrived and distracted Fowkes by telling him to drop the weapon. Huntley threw furniture at Fowkes and barricaded himself behind a door, which his assailant tried to force open. More prison officers arrived and Fowkes gave himself up, “saving Huntley from further attack”, after he first threatened to cut himself. Later, the court heard, two weapons were found on Fowkes, one constructed from a razor and the other a utensil sharpened to a point. The prosecution said Fowkes asked a prison officer: “Is he dead? I hope so.” When he asked if he had killed Huntley and was told he had not, Fowkes replied: “I wish I had.” Reeds described Huntley as a “notorious child killer, both inside prison and in society in general” and added: “The defendant has since expressed a particular hatred for child killers.” The judge was told he killed Hatch on D Wing at Full Sutton, a unit for vulnerable prisoners, where Fowkes had been placed after self-harming. Fowkes barricaded himself and Hatch into a cell and told prison officers he would not kill him if they stayed outside. The officers dealt with the incident as a hostage situation. But, with the officers unable to enter, Fowkes killed Hatch using strips of bedding. At one point, Fowkes told officers: “He’s a nonce. He doesn’t deserve to live.” He later claimed Hatch had contacted him by telepathy, asking Fowkes to kill him. Reeds said Fowkes claimed he was motivated to commit both attacks because “they were offenders against children.” He said Fowkes remarked: “They just do my head in. It was the same when I did Huntley.” The court heard that Fowkes has a long criminal record dating back to 1990, mainly robberies and weapons offences. Three psychiatrists and two psychologists have examined him and agreed he has a “deep seated disorder of great severity”. Fowkes had a severe personality disorder and “is, and will remain, a danger”. Crime Soham murders Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
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Director general Mark Thompson may use his address to staff on Thursday to reveal plans to quit west London Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, is considering announcing that the BBC will quit its entire west London home – possibly selling it to a football club – as part of radical plans that could see more staff moved out of the capital. The corporation is also planning to concentrate out-of-London production into fewer locations, with a plan to shut down the factual department in BBC Birmingham being mooted. England’s second city was once a key BBC centre, and is home to programmes such as the BBC’s Chelsea Flower Show coverage. BBC chairman Lord Patten and Thompson are addressing corporation staff on Thursday to tell them the results of the long-awaited “Delivering Quality First” cost-cutting strategy , which will see nearly 2,000 more jobs going at the public broadcaster. The BBC’s best-known west London home, Television Centre, is up for sale and it is thought the corporation has been in talks with both Queen’s Park Rangers and Chelsea football club about the clubs moving to the site. Chelsea in particular is looking to develop a larger stadium in the west London area. Television Centre is home to what is now called the BBC’s Vision division, including TV channel controllers, commissioning executives and production departments such as drama and entertainment. The site is also home to studios used for programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing, which are operated as a standalone BBC commercial subsidiary. The corporation is vacating the doughnut-shaped TV Centre by 2015, with its several thousand staff due to move to the refurbished Broadcasting House in central London or around the country to sites such as Salford. There have also been rumours, which the corporation has previously denied, that BBC drama could move to Cardiff. However, because parts of TV Centre are listed, the football clubs have expressed an interest in the BBC’s adjacent White City offices instead, which could be knocked down. The White City building – part of the overall White City office complex – is where Thompson and BBC Worldwide are based. One source said that BBC executives are deliberating whether or not to reveal the latest developments in the sale of Television Centre and possible move from White City at Thursday’s announcement. There is also spare capacity at the BBC’s new headquarters in Salford, which is the new home of children’s, sport, learning, parts of Radio 5 Live, future media and technology and BBC Breakfast. It is understood that despite the upheaval of those departments, they will not escape the DQF cuts, and that some of the vacancies created by people choosing not to move from London to Manchester will not be filled. BBC sources say that the 2,500 job losses being proposed include the 650 cuts to the World Service already announced. It is expected that the remaining redundancies will be “back-loaded”, so there will only be a few hundred during the first year or so, with the rest to come after that. About 50% of the cuts are due to come from non-programming areas, with the remaining half from programming. BBC Birmingham is expected to be scaled back, although it is understood that daytime drama Doctors and The Archers will continue to be made there. According to sources, there is a proposal that BBC Birmingham’s factual department is to be closed and its responsibilities, such as Chelsea Flower Show, moved to BBC Bristol. •
Continue reading …Director general Mark Thompson may use his address to staff on Thursday to reveal plans to quit west London Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, is considering announcing that the BBC will quit its entire west London home – possibly selling it to a football club – as part of radical plans that could see more staff moved out of the capital. The corporation is also planning to concentrate out-of-London production into fewer locations, with a plan to shut down the factual department in BBC Birmingham being mooted. England’s second city was once a key BBC centre, and is home to programmes such as the BBC’s Chelsea Flower Show coverage. BBC chairman Lord Patten and Thompson are addressing corporation staff on Thursday to tell them the results of the long-awaited “Delivering Quality First” cost-cutting strategy , which will see nearly 2,000 more jobs going at the public broadcaster. The BBC’s best-known west London home, Television Centre, is up for sale and it is thought the corporation has been in talks with both Queen’s Park Rangers and Chelsea football club about the clubs moving to the site. Chelsea in particular is looking to develop a larger stadium in the west London area. Television Centre is home to what is now called the BBC’s Vision division, including TV channel controllers, commissioning executives and production departments such as drama and entertainment. The site is also home to studios used for programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing, which are operated as a standalone BBC commercial subsidiary. The corporation is vacating the doughnut-shaped TV Centre by 2015, with its several thousand staff due to move to the refurbished Broadcasting House in central London or around the country to sites such as Salford. There have also been rumours, which the corporation has previously denied, that BBC drama could move to Cardiff. However, because parts of TV Centre are listed, the football clubs have expressed an interest in the BBC’s adjacent White City offices instead, which could be knocked down. The White City building – part of the overall White City office complex – is where Thompson and BBC Worldwide are based. One source said that BBC executives are deliberating whether or not to reveal the latest developments in the sale of Television Centre and possible move from White City at Thursday’s announcement. There is also spare capacity at the BBC’s new headquarters in Salford, which is the new home of children’s, sport, learning, parts of Radio 5 Live, future media and technology and BBC Breakfast. It is understood that despite the upheaval of those departments, they will not escape the DQF cuts, and that some of the vacancies created by people choosing not to move from London to Manchester will not be filled. BBC sources say that the 2,500 job losses being proposed include the 650 cuts to the World Service already announced. It is expected that the remaining redundancies will be “back-loaded”, so there will only be a few hundred during the first year or so, with the rest to come after that. About 50% of the cuts are due to come from non-programming areas, with the remaining half from programming. BBC Birmingham is expected to be scaled back, although it is understood that daytime drama Doctors and The Archers will continue to be made there. According to sources, there is a proposal that BBC Birmingham’s factual department is to be closed and its responsibilities, such as Chelsea Flower Show, moved to BBC Bristol. •
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We were not ever trying to urge people to pay their credit card bills tomorrow, Downing Street says David Cameron has hastily rewritten his conference speech to remove any suggestion that he is either urging or instructing the public to pay off their credit card bills – a move that could dampen consumer demand and worsen the recession. The prime minister’s aides said the speech would now read: “That is why households are paying down the credit card and store card bills”. The pre-briefed version of the speech on Tuesday read: “The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card card and store card bills.” A Downing Street aide said: “We are putting our hands up on this. It has been misinterpreted, and the only way to deal with it is to change the wording. We are not going to carry on when it is fairly obvious that it needed to be clarified. “People at home who are struggling cannot afford to pay off their debts, so to have an instruction from on high to do so would have been wrong. We were not ever trying to urge people to pay their credit card bills tomorrow. It was intended as a metaphor or an observation, as opposed to an instruction.” Downing Street also denied that Treasury forecasts showed household debt was set to rise, saying these figures included mortgages. A variety of papers had written up the speech as a haughty instruction from Cameron to the public to pay off their debts for the sake of the economy. On Wednesday morning, economists suggested the plan for a collective pay-off of credit card debts, if interpreted literally, would be economically disastrous as well as politically inept. The episode shows the delicate balancing act Cameron faces in trying to offer some optimism in the middle of the deepening recession. The prime minister does not want the entire Tory message to be one of gloom, deficits and debt, but fears he will be regarded as out of touch if he strays from those areas of concern. Conservative conference 2011 Conservative conference David Cameron Economic policy Conservatives Borrowing & debt Credit cards Consumer affairs Economics Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …We were not ever trying to urge people to pay their credit card bills tomorrow, Downing Street says David Cameron has hastily rewritten his conference speech to remove any suggestion that he is either urging or instructing the public to pay off their credit card bills – a move that could dampen consumer demand and worsen the recession. The prime minister’s aides said the speech would now read: “That is why households are paying down the credit card and store card bills”. The pre-briefed version of the speech on Tuesday read: “The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card card and store card bills.” A Downing Street aide said: “We are putting our hands up on this. It has been misinterpreted, and the only way to deal with it is to change the wording. We are not going to carry on when it is fairly obvious that it needed to be clarified. “People at home who are struggling cannot afford to pay off their debts, so to have an instruction from on high to do so would have been wrong. We were not ever trying to urge people to pay their credit card bills tomorrow. It was intended as a metaphor or an observation, as opposed to an instruction.” Downing Street also denied that Treasury forecasts showed household debt was set to rise, saying these figures included mortgages. A variety of papers had written up the speech as a haughty instruction from Cameron to the public to pay off their debts for the sake of the economy. On Wednesday morning, economists suggested the plan for a collective pay-off of credit card debts, if interpreted literally, would be economically disastrous as well as politically inept. The episode shows the delicate balancing act Cameron faces in trying to offer some optimism in the middle of the deepening recession. The prime minister does not want the entire Tory message to be one of gloom, deficits and debt, but fears he will be regarded as out of touch if he strays from those areas of concern. Conservative conference 2011 Conservative conference David Cameron Economic policy Conservatives Borrowing & debt Credit cards Consumer affairs Economics Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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Poll results pose dilemma for Obama administration as it tries to bolster support for continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan One in three US veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting, and a majority think that, after 10 years of combat, America should be focusing less on foreign affairs and more on domestic problems, according to an opinion poll. The findings pose a dilemma for the Obama administration and Congress as they struggle to reduce the huge budget deficit and reconsider defence priorities while trying to bolster public support for the continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly 4,500 US troops have been killed in Iraq and some 1,700 in Afghanistan. Combined war costs since the September 11 terrorist attacks have exceeded $1 trillion. The results of the survey, presented by the Washington-based Pew research centre on Wednesday, portray the war veterans as proud of their work, scarred by warfare and convinced that the American public has little understanding of the problems that wartime service has created for military members and their families. They were more likely than other Americans to call themselves Republicans, and to disapprove of Barack Obama’s performance as commander in chief. They also were more likely than previous generations of veterans to have no religious affiliation. Pew, a nonpartisan organisation that studies attitudes and trends, called the study the first of its kind. The results were based on two surveys conducted between late July and mid-September. One polled 1,853 veterans, including 712 who had served in the military after 9/11 but were no longer on active duty. Of the 712, 336 had served in Iraq or Afghanistan. The other survey questioned 2,003 adults who had not served in the military. Nearly half of post 9/11 veterans said deployments had strained their relationship with their spouses and a similar number reported problems with their children. However, some 60% said they and their families benefited financially from having served in a combat zone. Asked for a single word to describe their experiences, the veterans suggested: “rewarding”, “nightmare”, “eye opening” and “lousy”. There are about 98,000 US troops in Afghanistan, where the conflict began with a US-led invasion on 7 October 2001. Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign centred on a pledge to withdraw from Iraq and strengthen the military campaign in Afghanistan. He is on track to have US troops out of Iraq by the end of this year, and in July he announced that he would pull 10,000 troops out of Afghanistan this year and 23,000 more by next September. The Pew survey found that veterans were ambivalent about the net value of the wars, although they were generally positive about Afghanistan, which has been a more protracted but less deadly conflict for US forces. One in three veterans said neither war was worth the sacrifice; a view shared by 45% of the public polled. Some 50% of veterans said the campaign in Afghanistan had been worthwhile; 41% of civilians agreed. Among veterans, 44% said the war in Iraq was necessary; 36% of civilians shared that view. Of the former service members who were seriously wounded or knew someone who was killed or seriously wounded, 48% said the war in Iraq was worth fighting, compared with 36% of those with no personal exposure to casualties. Exposure to casualties had an even larger impact on attitudes toward the war in Afghanistan. Some 55% of those exposed to casualties said the military campaign in Afghanistan had been worth the cost to the US, whereas 40% of those who were not exposed to casualties held that view. Pew said its survey results found “isolationist inclinations” among the war veterans. About six in 10 said the US should pay less attention to problems overseas and instead concentrate on issues at home. In a survey it conducted earlier this year, a similar share of the public agreed. The results also reflected what many view as a troublesome cultural gap between the military and the public. Although numerous polls have shown that Americans hold troops in high regard, the respondents in the Pew research admitted to a lack of understanding of what military life entails. Only 27% of adult civilians said the public understood the problems facing those in uniform, while the proportion of veterans who said so was even lower at 21%. United States US military Obama administration US politics Iraq Afghanistan Middle East guardian.co.uk
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• ONS halves its GDP estimate for Q2 • 2008-9 recession deeper than thought • Business groups lobbying for more QE • But services sector bounced in September • Economics blog: fresh UK double-dip fears The UK economy barely grew in the second quarter as consumers cut spending, compounding more downbeat news from the eurozone and fuelling fears that Britain could soon slip back into recession . Official data also showed the 2008-2009 recession was deeper than orginally thought. Revising previous numbers, the Office for National Statistics halved its GDP estimate for April to June this year to just 0.1%, suggesting the economy had already ground to a halt before the European debt crisis escalated in the summer. Household spending dropped 0.8%, its sharpest decline since the depths of the recession at the start of 2009. With a bleak European outlook the Bank of England is expected to step in soon with another £50bn in electronic money to shore up the economy. But after separate news this morning that Britain’s dominant services sector defied market expectations and enjoyed a mild pick-up last month, the decision over whether to extend quantitative easing (QE) right away is likely to be finely balanced. Growth across the UK services sector – which accounts for more than 70% of the UK economy – quickened in September recovering from a sharp slowdown in August, according to a monthly survey of purchasing managers conducted by Markit and the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply. The seasonally adjusted index, which measures activity across the sector, rose to 52.9 in September from 51.1 in August. Economists had been predicting a reading of 50.5, barely clear of the 50-point mark that separates expansion from contraction. But companies remain deeply worried about spending cuts and the general economic outlook with business confidence at it lowest since early 2009 when Britain was mired in recession. Meanwhile, similar surveys in the eurozone this morning showed deeper woes. Italy’s services sector shrunk at its sharpest pace for more than two years in September while Germany’s service industries have slipped into contraction territory for the first time since July 2009. The BoE’s monetary policy committee meets Wednesday and Thursday but analysts say it may wait until next month when it has its latest economics forecasts to hand to launch more QE. “We believe it is only a matter of time before we see more QE,” said James Knightley at ING Financial Markets. “We favour November as the announcement point … given close proximity to the Fed and ECB policy meetings and the Cannes G20 summit. Being seen to act in some kind of coordinated fashion may also give the stimulus “more bang for its buck” rather than going it alone currently in what are very volatile markets and a mixed environment for data.” The services survey is closely watched given the services sector dominates the UK economy, with businesses ranging from hairdressers to insurers. Commenting on the details of the PMI survey, Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit said the headline reading “masks the fact that all is not well in the UK services economy.” “Growth of new business will need to pick up in the coming months to prevent a downturn in both business activity and employment in the final quarter of 2011. Companies are already reluctant to take on extra staff, with employment more or less stagnating in September, as worries about the economic outlook at home and abroad intensified.” With the threat of a double-dip recession worrying their members, some of Britain’s biggest business lobby groups have urged the MPC to step in with more QE, which involves the bank buying government bonds from banks to boost their finances and improve lending rates. Policymakers with have to weigh growth concerns against persistently high inflation, but several members of the committee have indictaed in recent speeches that more QE will come soon. Economic growth (GDP) Economics Services sector Recession Quantitative easing Bank of England European debt crisis Katie Allen guardian.co.uk
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At 10.45 BST the Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be announced in Stockholm. Get the news first here, with reaction from the scientific community to follow 10.56am: From the twittersphere: @simon_frantz writes: When Daniel Shechtman made his qusaicrystal disc. he said to himself “Eyn chaya kazo”/”There can be no such creature” He adds: In the course of defending his findings, Shechtman was asked to leave his research group. 10.50am: From the Nobel committee material: When Daniel Shechtman entered the discovery awarded with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 into his notebook, he jotted down three question marks next to it. The atoms in the crystal in front of him yielded a forbidden symmetry. It was just as impossible as a football – a sphere – made of only six-cornered polygons. Since then, mosaics with intriguing patterns and the golden ratio in mathematics and art have helped scientists to explain Shechtman’s bewildering observation. 10.48am: The prize has gone to Daniel Shechtman at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel ” for the discovery of quasicrystals ” 10.45am: Time to find out who is the Bob Dylan of chemistry… Here’s the live webcast of the announcement. 10.22: The last of the science Nobel prizes is announced today for contributions to chemistry. To complete our coverage of the week’s awards, we will be following events live here. We expect to have the name of the winner, or winners, by around 10.45am UK via the live-streaming video of the announcement from Stockholm which you can watch below. This has already been a fascinating year for the science Nobels, and not only for the breakthroughs and researchers the awards honoured. On Monday, the Nobel committee awarded the medicine prize to three researchers whose work on the immune system has opened up new avenues for tackling diseases. Unknown to the committee at the time, one of the recipients had died only days earlier. The prize stands . Yesterday, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to three scientists who observed exploding stars in faraway galaxies and deduced that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. This striking and counterintuitive result introduced the concept of “dark energy”, a mysterious force that apparently drives the universe apart. While scientists applauded the award, the astronomer royal, Lord Rees, cautioned that in honouring only three people, the prize failed to recognise the work of the teams involved. So who will win the chemistry prize? The Washington Post
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John Demjanjuk’s conviction set a precedent under which hundreds of suspects could be charged, say prosecutors Prosecutors in Germany have reopened hundreds of investigations of former Nazi death camp guards and others who might now be charged under a precedent set by the conviction of John Demjanjuk, a guard at Sobibor camp in Poland in 1943. Given the advanced age of the suspects – the youngest is in his 80s – the head of the German prosecutors’ office dedicated to investigating Nazi war crimes said authorities would not wait for the Demjanjuk appeal process to finish. “We don’t want to wait too long, so we’ve already begun our investigations,” Kurt Schrimm said. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s chief Nazi-hunter, Efraim Zuroff, said he would launch a campaign in the next two months – a successor to his Operation Last Chance – to track down the remaining war criminals. He added that the Demjanjuk conviction had opened the door to prosecutions that were never thought possible. “It could be a very interesting final chapter,” he said by telephone from Jerusalem. “This has tremendous implications, even at this late date.” Demjanjuk, now 91, was deported from the US to Germany in 2009 to stand trial. He was convicted in May of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder for serving as a guard at the Sobibor death camp . It was the first time prosecutors were able to convict someone in a Nazi-era case without direct evidence that the suspect participated in a specific killing. He has appealed against his conviction. In bringing Demjanjuk to trial, Munich prosecutors argued that if they could prove he was a guard at a camp like Sobibor, which had been established for the sole purpose of extermination, it would be enough to convict him of being an accessory to murder. After 18 months of testimony a Munich court agreed and found Demjanjuk guilty, sentencing him to five years in prison. Demjanjuk, a retired car worker who denies having served as a guard, is currently free and living in southern Germany as he waits for his appeal to be heard. Schrimm said his office was poring over its files to see if others fit into the same category as Demjanjuk. He could not give an exact figure, but said there were probably “less than 1,000″ possible suspects living in Germany and elsewhere who could face prosecution. “We have to check everything – from the people who we were aware of in camps like Sobibor … or also in the Einsatzgruppen,” he said, referring to the death squads responsible for mass killings, particularly early in the war before the camps were established. It has not yet been tested in court whether the Demjanjuk precedent could be extended to guards of Nazi camps where thousands died but whose sole purpose was not necessarily murder. Murder and related offences are the only charges that are not subject to a statute of limitations in Germany. Even the narrowest scenario – investigating the guards of the four death camps: Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Treblinka – plus those involved in the Einsatzgruppen could lead to scores of prosecutions, Zuroff said. “We’re talking about an estimated 4,000 people,” he said. “Even if only 2% of those people are alive, we’re talking 80 people – and let’s assume half of them are not medically fit to be brought to justice – that leaves us with 40 people, so there is incredible potential.” Immediately after the war senior Nazis such as Hermann Göring were convicted at war-crimes trials run by the allied powers, while investigations of lower-ranking officials fell to German courts. But there was little political will to aggressively pursue the prosecutions, and many of the trials ended with short sentences or the acquittal of suspects in greater positions of responsibility than Demjanjuk allegedly had. For example, Karl Streibel, the commandant of the SS camp Trawniki where Demjanjuk allegedly was trained, was tried in Hamburg but acquitted in 1976 after judges ruled it had not been proved that he knew what the guards being trained would be used for. But the current generation of prosecutors and judges in Germany has shown a willingness to pursue even the lower ranks, something applauded by Zuroff. “Our goal is to bring as many people to justice as possible,” Zuroff said. “They shouldn’t be let off if they’re less than Mengele, less than Himmler … in a tragedy of this scope their escaping justice should not in any way mean that people of a lesser level would be ignored.” Working in favour of the new investigators is the fact that most suspects would probably have lived openly and under their own names for decades, believing they had no prosecutions to fear. Those who are harder to locate will be the focus of the Wiesenthal centre’s new appeal, which Zuroff said would include unspecified reward money for information that helps uncover a suspect. However, Schrimm said it makes sense to try to bring new cases to trial once the Demjanjuk case is through the appeals process, rather than expend the resources needed to charge a suspect only to have the case thrown out if Demjanjuk wins. “The suspects are old, that’s why we’re preparing everything now so that as soon as there is a final decision, we can move immediately with charges,” he said. Zuroff said he hoped the appeal would be fast-tracked so new charges could be filed. “This is a test for the German judicial system to see if they can expedite this in an appropriate manner to enable these cases to go forward,” he added. Germany War crimes Europe guardian.co.uk
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