Austria refuses to deport suspected war criminal
Austria has refused to deport a former SS officer to Italy where he is accused of being involved in the murder of more than 300 civilians.
The Austrian rejection of the appeal comes days after Italy made a similarly unsuccessful plea to Germany for the extradition of another SS chief.
Friedrich Engel has already been convicted in his absence by an Italian court of nearly 250 murders.
Engel is living free in Hamburg and has even admitted involvement in some of the killings.
In the latest case Italy had asked for Austria to hand over former SS officer Wilhelm Schubernig, who's accused of being involved in the killings as a war time warning against partisan attacks.
But Dietmar Pacheiner, the head of the State Prosecutor's Office in the southern Austrian province of Carinthia where Schubernig lives, said: "Austria does not deport its own citizens."
Schubernig, now 86, lives in Sankt Veit an der Glan and is alleged by Italian Jewish groups to have taken part in the shooting of hostages in caves along Italy's Adriatic coast on 24 March 1944.
The SS killed 335 Italian civilian prisoners including 75 Jews and justified the massacre as a reprisal for an attack by partisans on an SS unit in Rome.
Defending his decision not to extradite Schubernig, Mr Pacheiner said an investigation by Carinthian authorities had not been completed and was on hold indefinitely because medical experts had said he was not fit to answer questions.
