Tracking down Klaus Barbie

Kyt · Sep 10, 2008

In pursuit of Bolivia's secret Nazi - Guardian Weekly

After the second world war many high-ranking Nazis fled to South America. Among them was the head of the Gestapo in the French city of Lyon, a man responsible for the deportation of Jews to the death camp at Auschwitz and the torture of members of the French Resistance. Hiding in Bolivia, Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, changed his name to Klaus Altmann and made himself helpful to drug lords and dictators alike. Bolivian journalist Gustavo Sanchez explains what happened when he tracked Barbie down in 1983

For decades here in Bolivia we had an infamous tradition of ruthless dictators. In the early 70s General Hugo Banzer siezed power. He turned to the ex-Nazi Klaus Barbie to help him with the repression. It was not the first time that Barbie, a war criminal wanted by the French and German authorities, had mingled with hardliners. Here in Bolivia he used to do big business with the drug lords. He had his own team of assassins, some from Italy and others from Argentina, called the Grooms of Death. He also sold them weapons.

American intelligence officials helped Barbie to become established in Bolivia as part of their crusade against communism. He acted as a sort of counter-intelligence official. Under the alias of Klaus Altmann he worked primarily as an interrogator and torturer. He also helped in the same way in Peru. He did the same things here as in Germany and France. For him the word communist meant "dead". Many Bolivians died during that dictatorship; one that was prolonged for more than 10 years. Barbie was in charge of the murders of many Bolivian citizens, including priests and members of the opposition.

So some of us felt that we had to do something about it. But in 1980, after General Banzer, an even bloodier dictator, Luis García Meza, rose to power in what was called the narco, or cocaine, coup. Barbie was a key aide then. He was the main ideologue of that coup; he organised absolutely everything. He was even given the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Bolivian armed forces, and was then able to move around with total impunity. Today Bolivians know all about Barbie, but for a long time many even doubted that such a criminal could be here.

I was kind of obsessed with Barbie since the beginning. In the 70s, when I was in Chile with the Marxist Régis Debray and the Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, we masterminded a plan to kidnap Barbie. But we failed. Back then I was a simple leftist journalist, who was on very bad terms with the dictators’ regimes – I knew that if I stayed I would be killed. I was in Chile until General Pinochet took over, then in Argentina until the junta took over, and finally in Cuba, until Bolivia’s return to democracy in 1982 under Hernán Siles Suazo.

One day, after my return to a democratic Bolivia, I received a phone call from the president himself asking me to "take care of" Barbie. That same day I was named deputy minister of the interior with one objective: to hand over Barbie to the French authorities within 24 hours. French president François Mitterrand, with the advice of Régis Debray, who was his aide [and who fought with Che Guevara in the 60s], agreed that Barbie should be tried in France.

And I did so. I accomplished my mission: we actually got him for tax evasion. I went personally to take him from San Pedro prison in La Paz to the airport where we sent him to French Guiana, and then he was sent to Lyon for trial. When I got hold of him he was very reluctant to talk. But once we were at the airstrip, about to enter the plane, he asked me: "Where are you taking me?" He seemed to think we were taking him to another military outpost where he could meet some of his old friends, or perhaps back to Germany. When I told him he was going to Lyon he said: "It cannot be."

At this point I said to him: "Yes, you are going back there. Do you remember the French adage which says that a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime? Don’t you remember sending 600,000 Jews to concentration camps and gas chambers? As you personally killed so many in Lyon, you are going back there." "But," he said, "in war there are winners and losers." "So you lost," I said. "It is time to pay."

I was as afraid – as any other mortal would be – of retaliation from the many radical factions linked to Barbie in Bolivia. It was the same in France, where I was the only Bolivian witness during the trial and the supporters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who sympathise with the Nazis, were after my tail. But the risk was worth taking. A man from the left, like me, cannot be afraid of the right. If I had to be killed, then so be it. But the Barbie issue was beyond ideologies: I knew that what I was doing was the right thing. He was a criminal for the whole of humankind and had to be condemned.

• Gustavo Sanchez was speaking to Andrés Schipani in La Paz.

• In 1987 Klaus Barbie was tried in Lyon and sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity. He died in prison in 1991. You can see more of Sanchez's story in the soon-to-be released movie La Traque: Manhunt. You can also read the harrowing story of Lise Lesevre, one of the women tortured by Barbie in 1944, who testified against him at his trial, here.
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Tracking down Klaus Barbie

Kyt Άρης

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