(19 Dec 2005) SHOTLIST
1. Tilt down exterior of court
2. Press
3. Sign, reads: "State court Munich 1, First Criminal Division"
4. Various of courtroom
5. Prosecutor Konstantin Kuchenbauer
6. Ladislav Niznansky arriving at court
7. Pan from press to Niznansky
8. Various of Niznansky in court
9. SOUNDBITE (German): Ladislav Niznansky:
"I had expected that (the verdict), yes, I have always hoped for justice and now it has been conceded."
9. Niznansky talking to press
10. SOUNDBITE (German): Steffen Ufer, defence lawyer:
"The verdict is a first class acquittal because the court made it clear that the former Communist conclusions were totally wrong."
11. SOUNDBITE (German): Konstantin Kuchenbauer, prosecutor:
"Justice for the victims that were killed and liquidated at that time has not been restored. Therefore, we will appeal against the decision and we will check if the verdict will last."
(CLIENTS PLEASE NOTE - SOUNDBITE IS REPEATED)
12. Wide shot of courtroom
13. Various of Niznansky hugging his wife
STORYLINE
A German court acquitted an 88-year-old man of murder on Monday in three Nazi massacres in Slovakia at the end of World War II.
Ladislav Niznansky showed no reaction as his acquittal on 164 counts of murder was announced in the Munich state court.
The charges related to massacres in early 1945 after a failed uprising against Slovakia's Nazi puppet government.
Presiding Judge Manfred Goetzl cited contradictory evidence from witnesses and said some had withdrawn testimony given when Niznansky was convicted in absentia by communist Czechoslovakia in 1962.
Goetzl said evidence from that trial was unreliable.
Prosecutors had sought the maximum sentence of life imprisonment in what was likely one of the last trials dealing with Nazi-era crimes.
Prosecutor Konstantin Kuchenbauer said they would appeal.
A former Slovak army captain who at first supported the 1944 revolt, Niznansky changed sides after his capture and took charge of the Slovak section of a Nazi unit code-named Edelweiss that hunted resistance fighters and Jews.
He was convicted of the shootings and other killings and sentenced to death in absentia by Czechoslovakia in 1962.
By then, he had moved to Germany and worked for US-financed Radio Free Europe in Munich, which broadcast Western programming to the Soviet bloc.
Now retired, he became a German citizen in 1996.
German authorities began their investigation in 2001 after a Slovak request, and judges travelled to Slovakia to interview surviving witnesses.
Niznansky was arrested in January 2004.
The court released him from police custody in October 2004, citing contradictory testimony from a witness whose evidence helped secure his conviction in 1962.
Still, prosecutors have maintained that evidence presented in his 14-month trial showed he was an active commander of some of the forces involved in the slaughter of 146 people in two Slovak villages and the later killing of 18 Jewish civilians.
Niznansky says that he fought partisans after being forced to join the Nazi unit and that he took part in the operation against the villages.
However, he insists that others ordered and carried out the killings, and the 1962 evidence was from what he called a communist show trial.
He has told the court he regrets the deaths.
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