Italian lawmakers and Jewish community leaders have reacted angrily to a ruling that awarded a Nazi war criminal day release in his life sentence for Italy's worst WWII atrocity.
Ex-SS captain Erich Priebke, 93, was sentenced to life in 1998 for his part in the execution of 335 men and boys, including 26 Jews, at a quarry outside Rome in 1944.
He has been under house arrest since 2003 after being released from a military prison for health reasons in 1999.
Priebke has been living in the house of his lawyer, who has now convinced a Rome military tribunal to let Priebke work in his office.
The tribunal's Tuesday night ruling sparked an outcry on Wednesday.
Centre-left lawmaker Roberto Giacchetti called on Rome to "mobilise" against the sentence while Communist MP Pino Sgobio said Priebke's release was an "offence to the memory" of those who died and Lazio Regional President Piero Marrazzo spoke of "incomprehensible lenience".
The leader of Rome's Jewish community, Leone Paserman, said the ruling "throws shame on the magistrate who decided it and the entire judiciary".
Paserman noted ironically that the same tribunal which let Priebke out for poor health now deemed him fit enough to work.
The leader of Italy's Jewish communities, Renzo Gattegna, said "we are appalled and depressed".
Both Paserman and Gattegna voiced the fear that Priebke's release might be a prelude to his fleeing Italy like his former commander, ex-Rome SS chief Herbert Kappler, who escaped from a Rome military hospital in 1977 and died the next year in West Germany.
The Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem called the ruling "outrageous".
Deputy Premier Francesco Veltroni and Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni voiced "solidarity" with the Jewish community.
Italian Justice Minister Clemente Mastella voiced "solidarity" with Italy's Jewish community but said he could not comment on the "merits" of the ruling because military tribunals come under the defence ministry.
LAWYER UNDAUNTED.
Priebke's lawyer Paolo Giachini was undaunted by the outcry, arguing that his client had only received the same treatment as a string of Italian ex-terrorists.
"I have a very high regard for the general (sic) and I am proud to have him as a guest in my house, because I think he has been persecuted.
"He is the oldest prisoner in the world and they still haven't suspended his sentence - they even did that for (late Chilean dictator Augusto) Pinochet".
The head of an association of relatives of terrorism victims, Bruno Gerardi, said "it is only right that Priebke should be free since Red Brigades members, who also killed innocent people, are free and happy".
"Murderers are murderers whatever their political and social motivations," Berardi added.
Giachini said his friend and client, who knows four languages, would be doing legal translations for him as well as helping file his cases.
There has been some speculation that the ex-Nazi might also write a second book with Giachini after his 2003 autobiography Vae Victis (Latin for "woe to the conquered").
Apart from a media scrum waiting for Priebke to turn up for work, there was little unusual activity in the central Rome street where Giachini's office is situated.
A client at a corner bar commented: "Priebke coming to work here? He already did his dirty work, a long time ago".
But the owner of a nearby trattoria said he wouldn't refuse to serve the war criminal "because you can't deny anyone a plate of pasta".
The latest row over Priebke was the second time in two years that the Italian political world and the Jewish community had protested against alleged lenience for the former Nazi.
In 2005 a decision to allow him to spend some time at a friend's summer home caused a similar outcry.
Acting on Kappler's order in 1944, Priebke rounded up the 335 who were taken to a quarry on the outskirts of Rome and executed in reprisal for a partisan bomb that killed 33 German soldiers in downtown Rome.
He was extradited from Argentina in November 1995, where he had lived openly as a schoolteacher since the end of the war.
