STUTTGART, Germany (AP) - An 81-year-old former SS officer hasbeen arrested on new evidence for the shooting deaths of sevenJewish concentration camp prisoners in 1945, prosecutors saidThursday.
Julius Viel is accused of killing the seven inmates at theformer Theresienstadt concentration camp, in the present-day CzechRepublic, as they were digging anti-tank trenches near the Czechtown of Leitmeritz.
He was arrested Wednesday at his home in a village near Wangen,close to the Austrian border, after officials received documentslinking Viel to the deaths, said Sabine Maylaender, spokeswomanfor the prosecutors' office in Stuttgart.
``These documents support the testimony of witnesses'' whosaid Viel ``randomly'' shot the seven prisoners, Maylaender said.
Viel was an instructor at an SS officers' school in Leitmeritzat the time, prosecutors said.
Viel denies any involvement in the shootings and told investigatorshe was not in the region.
Investigators identified Viel on information obtained by Nazihunter Steven Rambam from a University of Montreal professor,who gave the name of a witness on the condition Rambam would concealhis former SS association, prosecutors said.
The witness, who lives in North America, has been in contactwith German investigators, Maylaender said. Investigators havealso identified 900 witnesses in Germany and Austria and heardtestimony from 300, she said.
Viel worked for newspapers in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttembergfor years, and was awarded the federal medal of honor in 1983for encouraging hiking through his newspaper columns.
AP-NY-10-07-99 1031EDT