Group claims Germany housing Nazi criminal

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MUNICH, Germany, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- A former member of the Danish Waffen-SS wanted for murder and ranked eighth on a list of the top 10 Nazi fugitives is living comfortably in Germany.

Soren Kam, 86, is a target of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's "Operation Last Chance," an effort to round up former Nazi officers and disclose Germany's role in providing safe haven for alleged war criminals, Britain's Telegraph reported Thursday.

"Kam is on my list because in my estimation he is one of the top 10 Nazis that could feasibly be brought to trial" for alleged war crimes, said Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the center's director.

The Danish government indicted Kam, who also is alleged to have had a role in the deportation of Danish Jews to Nazi death camps as an obersturmfuhrer (senior lieutenant), on a murder charge for the 1943 death of anti-Nazi Danish newspaper editor Carl Henrick Clemmenson.

The German government threw out a case to extradite Kam to Denmark earlier this year in what Zuroff said is a "misplaced German judicial sympathy" toward those "who faithfully served the Third Reich."

Munich courts ruled Kam acted in self-defense in the Clemmenson case even though evidence at the trial of one of his alleged accomplices showed Clemmenson was killed by bullets from three guns, and the statute of limitations for manslaughter expired, meaning Kam may continue to live in Germany.