Copenhagen says it won’t prosecute Danes for WWll crimes

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Denmark’s top prosecutor says two elderly Danes — including one holding a Swedish passport — cannot be prosecuted because there is no evidence linking them to the mass murder of Jews in Belarus during World War II.

Mohammad Ahsan said Tuesday he found no evidence for active or passive participation in the killings after the Simon Wiesenthal Center appealed a similar decision by Copenhagen prosecutors in November.

In November, prosecutors said their probe had been “very thorough” but that evidence against one of the men — 91-year-old Helmuth Leif Rasmussen — was “limited.”

In 2015, the center asked Danish police to investigate the case after Denmark’s Justice Ministry had turned down a similar request as not their responsibility.

Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Ephraim Zuroff believed there was a strong case against them because of documents found by Danish historians that said he was in the inner circle of the camp run by the Waffen SS where 1,400 Jews died.

After the war, Rasmussen was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for having served as a soldier for Nazi Germany.

Now known by the name Rasboel, he has acknowledged being among the 6,000 Danish volunteers who joined the Waffen SS after Germany invaded the Scandinavian country in 1940.

Rasmussen has vehemently denied involvement in the killings.

One of the authors of the book “En skole i vold” (A Book of Violence), Dennis Larsen, says Rasmussen admitted seeing Jews being killed and thrown into mass graves.

“But he always said he was a bystander,” Larsen told the AP.