HAS THE celebrated "Ratline" come to the rescue of 83 year old former 55 captain, Erich Priebke, the man who yesterday was effectively acquitted of a charge of multiple homicide at the Ardeatine Caves massacre in 1944, the worst civilian atrocity in Italy's bitter World War Two history?
On the afternoon of March 23rd, 1944 a team of partisan resistance fighters blew up 33 Nazi fascist soldiers in an ambush in Via Rasella, central Rome. The partisans escaped without loss.
Der Fuehrer Adolf Hitler was 50 enraged by this attack on his occupying forces in the so called "Open City" of Rome that he immediately ordered that for every Nazi soldier killed, 50 Italians be executed by way of reprisal.
With difficulty, the German supreme commander in Italy, Field Marshal Kesselring persuaded Hitler to settle for 10 Italian civilians for every dead Nazi. Working feverishly through the night and helped by the enthusiastic cooperation of Italian fascist police chief, Pietro Caruso, who supplied at least 50 victims the Rome Gestapo chief, Herber Kappler, got his numbers up to 330.
By early afternoon on the next day, March 24th, lorries began transporting the 330 out to the Ardeatine Caves, close to Rome. For all the passengers on the lorries, it was their last journey.
In an affidavit supplied to a military tribunal in 1948, Maj Kappler not only provided a chilling description of the massacre but also proof of Erich Priebke's involvement: "At about 1400 hours the first transports began to move and I and a number of my men went to the cave.
"As each truck arrived at the caves the persons concerned always five at a time and each accompanied by an SS man, were led to the end of the cave. All persons had their hands tied behind their backs.
"At the end of the cave the five were made to kneel down together and at a given order they were shot in the back of the head by the accompanying SS men at short range. The next five were shot by officers and I was one of, these officers.
"After the execution of each five, the five SS men went to the exit and in the meantime another five SS men brought in the next five victims."
"After I had fired my shot, I went out and controlled the following: Priebke's checking of the lists the preparations for the engineers to blow up the cave . . . The executions were over at about 20.30 hours."
SS Captain Erich Priebke was present at the Ardeatine caves massacre in the role of Nazi book keeper, ticking off the names of the victims as they went to their deaths.
Even that very role proved controversial since 335 civilians, including 75 Jews, were shot - five more than required by the 10 for one ratio. During his trial, Herr Priebke was accused by the prosecution of callous negligence in wilfully sending an extra five people to their deaths.
One of thousands of Nazi officers captured by Allied forces in 1945, Erich Priebke managed to hide his involvement in the Ardeatine massacre before escaping from a British prisoner of war camp in Rimini in 1948.
He has always claimed that he was helped out of Italy by a Vatican controlled "Ratline" run by the Hungarian bishop, Alois Hudal. (The claim cannot lightly be dismissed since Herr Priebke's Rome duties included the handling of relations with the Holy See).
Whatever about his method of escape, Erich Priebke had lived openly and under his own name in the Andean ski resort of Bariloche, Argentina from 1948 until two years ago. His life as hotelier and pillar of the Bariloche community was rudely interrupted by an ABC TV crew who had acted on a tip off from Marvin Heir of the Simon Wiesenthal foundation in Los Angeles.
Last November, at the end of a complex legal wrangle, Herr Priebke was finally extradited to Italy for a trial which began in May. Tall and military in bearing, the ageing Priebke continued to proclaim his relative innocence, arguing that he was a middle ranking officer carrying out orders.
Witnesses at his trial, however, counterclaimed that he was a committed SS man whose special penchant during interrogations was the use of an iron fist. Yesterday's perplexing verdict appears to have accepted both arguments by ruling that while Priebke is guilty, he may also benefit from unspecified "extenuating circumstances and a statute of limitations.
The Priebke verdict, like the Priebke trial itself, has failed to clarify many mysteries.
Was it a culpable lack of Argentine/Italian lack of political will that allowed him go on living openly in Argentina for so long? Did fascist sympathisers influence the handling of his case, primarily by having it heard in a military tribunal which could always argue the statute of limitations?
What were the "irregularities" in the Rome military tribunal's handling of the case which prompted the prosecuting attorney, Atonino Intelisano, to call for the three man bench of judges to step down, late in June?