Serbia has issued an international arrest warrant for United States citizen Peter Egner, who is suspected of killing thousands of civilians during World War II.
Egner, a former Gestapo member, is the subject of a Belgrade war crimes court ruling, issued after 20 months of investigation. Serbian media reported that Egner, an ethnic German born in the former Yugoslavia and now living in Seattle, Washington, was responsible for the deaths of about 17,000 civilians.
AFP quoted Serbian war crimes prosecutor's spokesman Bruno Vekaric as saying that Egner, 88, stands accused of war crimes, genocide, and of supporting such crimes. Egner reportedly worked in concentration camps in Belgrade during 1941-2, at the age of 19-20, as a member of the Nazis' Gestapo secret police. In that capacity, he was involved in executions of Jews and other civilians, including women and children.
The United States Justice Department says he served in an Einsatzgruppe, a Serbian police unit run by the Nazis that killed thousands of Jewish and Serbian women and children in early 1942. The murders were carried out by gassing the victims with carbon monoxide in a specially designed van. Egner says he knows nothing about the unit.
AFP adds that in 2008, US Justice Department authorities requested that a federal court revoke Egner's American citizenship, which he received in 1966. The Department said he had failed to inform the authorities about his service with the Nazi-controlled Security Police and Security Service in Belgrade during World War II.
Egner can be extradited to Serbia only if his citizenship is revoked.
The Two Camps: More Than 100,000 Victims in Three Years
More than 100,000 people were murdered in Belgrade's two concentration camps during the German occupation of Serbia during World War II. The larger was Sajmište, established in December 1941 and shut down in September 1944. The majority of Serbian Jews were killed in the Sajmište camp. The second camp was Banjica, which opened six months before Sajmiste and was shut down at the same time. It started as a center for holding hostages, but later included Jews, Serbs, Roma, captured partisans, and other opponents of the German Reich. A Yugoslav Army barracks before the German occupation, Banjica also played a major role in the systematic destruction of the Serbian Jewish population.