Klaus Barbie goes on trial in Lyon for war crimes committed during World War II.
Nikolaus Barbie (25 October 1913 – 25 September 1991) was a German operative of the SS and SD who worked in Vichy France during World War II. He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for having personally tortured prisoners—primarily Jews and members of the French Resistance—as the head of the Gestapo in Lyon. After the war, United States intelligence services, which employed him for his anti-Marxist efforts, aided his escape to Bolivia, where he advised the regime on how to repress opposition through torture.The West German Intelligence Service later recruited him. Barbie is suspected of having had a role in the Bolivian coup d'état orchestrated by Luis García Meza in 1980. After the fall of the dictatorship, Barbie no longer had the protection of the government in La Paz. In 1983, he was extradited to France, where he was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. Although he had been sentenced to death in absentia twice earlier, in 1947 and 1954, capital punishment had been abolished in France in 1981. Barbie died of cancer in prison in 1991, at age 77.