Nazi war criminal Barbie was key figure in cocaine trade — report

Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was deeply involved in setting up one of South America’s most important drug cartels, according to a report by German news weekly Der Spiegel.

Dubbed the “Butcher of Lyon” for his wartime torture of prisoners, the former Gestapo chief in the occupied French city fled to South America after the end of World War II.

He was extradited from Bolivia to France in 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 on charges of crimes against humanity. He died in prison in 1991.

According to Der Spiegel, Barbie — living under the alias Klaus Altmann — became a security adviser to drug baron Roberto Suarez after the two men met in the 1970s.

Suarez’s son, Gary, tells the magazine that Barbie was “an important person to my father.”

“He knew something about security, military strategy and secret service work,” he says.

Barbie was also active in advising the Bolivian security services, helping set up a death squad for dictator Luis Garcia Meza.

A CIA despatch from May 1974, seen by Der Spiegel, reveals that the agency’s officers already suspected Barbie of involvement in the drug trade, the magazine says.

Barbie was recruited as an anti-communist agent by American secret services after the war, and the United States later apologized to France for helping Barbie evade justice.