Word: bolivia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...France's most revered Resistance leader, who is believed to have died under torture in 1943. Twice Barbie was tried in absentia for his crimes and sentenced to death by French tribunals. But for more than three decades the Nazi managed to escape punishment and, indeed, prospered in Bolivia under the alias Klaus Altmann...
...other Gestapo fugitives wanted by Allied authorities; in return he was given a false identity, a home in Munich and the opportunity to get out of Germany while the Americans played dumb and refused French requests for his arrest. By 1951, the Butcher of Lyon was safely exiled in Bolivia...
...citizenship in 1957 and soon established a profitable external commerce company-in reality a front for an arms shipment network. The ex-Gestapo officer, appreciated for his contacts abroad, made friends in high places. As unofficial leader of a fairly large collection of exiled German war criminals hiding in Bolivia, Barbie was able to organize his cronies into a sophisticated paramilitary back-up unit for General Banzar, who took power in La Paz in 1971. Banzar, for his part, kept the French legal authorities at bay through his hand-picked Supreme Court. Barbie and friends could frequently be seen enjoying...
...style right-wing dictatorships. On October 10, 1982, Hernan Siles Zuazo, leader of a left-wing coalition, ascended to the Presidency. Barbie's Bolivian days were numbered as soon as the new government in La Paz demonstrated its intention to make amends for the past and clean up Bolivia's image as a Nazi haven. And Barbie blundered: following the death of his wife from cancer and the loss of his son in a plane crash the year before, the once nimble war criminal decided to stay put in the hope that the supreme court would continue to refuse extradition...
...January 25, 1983, Barbie received notification of his impending expulsion from Bolivia, and a few days later found himself abroad a C-130 transport plane headed for French Guinea. Waiting to accept the prize for France's socialist government, Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy explained to the world the reasoning behind Barbie's extradition...