Biographic notes (excerpt)<\/p>\n
People.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Born 1908, place of birth unknown<\/strong> Born in 1955, place of birth unknown<\/strong> Born 1968 in Pittsburgh<\/strong> Biographic notes (excerpt) People. Born 1908, place of birth unknown At the age of 32 he became Commissar of the Interior in Soviet Latvia. He served as Commissar of the\u00a0Interior …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":3246,"menu_order":114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-menschen.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5504","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nAt the age of 32 he became Commissar of the Interior in Soviet Latvia. He served as Commissar of the\u00a0Interior from 1940 to 1953, and as Commissar of State Security and the NKWD (predecessor to the\u00a0KGB) he participated in numerous deportations. In 1949 alone he is said to have personally ordered\u00a041,544 deportations. For this he was awarded a military decoration, the \u201cMedal of the Red Flag\u201d.\u00a0He retired in the 1950s. His unchallenged life ended in 1994 when he was arrested in Riga.\u00a0Accused in 1993, and in December 1995 charged by the Riga District Court with genocide, crimes\u00a0against humanity, ordering the execution of political prisoners, personal participation in torture,\u00a0requisition and other crimes, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in prison three months\u00a0after the sentence was pronounced.\u00a0During the process he admitted his responsibility for the deportations but only in as much as he was\u00a0obeying orders.<\/p>\n
\nIn 1991 the married man with five children began his political activities in Rwanda. He was president\u00a0of a local section of the Mouvement D\u00e9mocratique R\u00e9publicain (MDR, Democratic Republican\u00a0Movement) and from 1993 to his escape in 1994 was Mayor of the Taba commune.\u00a0After he was arrested on October 10, 1995 in Lusaka he was transferred on May 15, 1996 to the UN\u00a0tribunal in Arusha. On October 2, 1998 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for directly\u00a0participating in genocide and as the representative of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,\u00a0ICTR, for inciting and committing genocide, extermination, murder, torture, rape and other crimes\u00a0against humanity. On December 9, 2001 he as extradited to Mali and imprisoned there.<\/p>\n
\nHe was a particularly religious and active member of a Protestant church in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.\u00a0In civilian life he worked as a prison attendant. The 23-year old man also served in the Iraq War in this\u00a0capacity.\u00a0His participation in the mistreatment and torture of prisoners is documented in numerous photos.\u00a0Amongst other things he was charged with conspiracy to mistreat prisoners, assaults on prisoners and\u00a0indecent actions in the Abu Ghraib prison, and in 2005, pronounced guilty by a military court in Fort\u00a0Hood for nine of the ten charges.
\nThe tribunal sentenced him to a ten-year prison sentence and ordered his dishonorable discharge from\u00a0the army. Also directly after the trial he attempted to justify his actions. Although he knew, as a\u00a0Christian, that he had behaved wrongly, but as a soldier he had to obey and unconditionally carry out\u00a0orders from superiors. He had no proof of the orders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"