Distomo victims’ compensation in question

IT WAS only six days after D-Day, the most decisive act to bring an end to the Second World War, that the German Waffen SS showed its utmost cruelty: on 10 June 1944, its soldiers massacred 218 innocent civilians in the village of Distomo and set almost all the houses on fire - one of the most horrifying atrocities in occupied Greece.  Decades later, the victims’ living relatives found justice in an Italian court, which gave them the green light to seize Villa Vigoni, a German-Italian cultural centre on Lake Cuomo owned by the German state, by way of compensation. From September 12 to 15 this year, the Hague-based International Court of Justice was hearing the arguments of both the Italian and German side, with Germany accusing Italy of violating the principle of state immunity. The court also heard an intervention from Greece, which still hopes to get compensation.  In 1997 the Livadeia Court of First Instance (protodikeio) had found Germany liable for serious violations of humanitarian law committed during the Distomo massacre and awarded damages worth 28 million euros to relatives of the victims of the massacre. Germany lodged an appeal before the Greek Supreme Court (Areios Pagos), which, in 2000, upheld the Livadeia judgment by an overwhelming majority.  Enforcing a decision However, the Livadeia judgment could not be enforced in Greece, as the authorisation required for enforcing a decision against a third state was not granted by the then minister of justice Michalis Stathopoulos. “I never received a formal request for the enforcement of the decision,” Stathopoulos told the Athens News. He also noted that he was not in favour of the claimants’ request to seize the building housing the Goethe Institute in Athens, since it was an educational institution, but he was not against the enforcement of the decision per se. In 2002, the claimants made a formal request to then justice minister Filippos Petsalnikos to seize a real-estate property in Thessaloniki owned by the German state, in order to enforce the Livadeia ruling, but he refused to grant the permission.  By contrast, the Distomo victims’ relatives did succeed in securing approval of seizure in 2005 through a decision of the Florence Court of Appeal, which declared that the Livadeia ruling was enforceable on Italian territory. In 2007, the Greek applicants registered with the Cuomo provincial office of the Italian Land Registry a legal charge that would allow them to seize Villa Vigoni. One year later, Germany filed in The Hague court an appeal, maintaining that Italy “has failed to respect the jurisdictional immunity which Germany enjoys under international law”. Besides appealing the Distomo case, Germany also asked for a reversal of a decision by an Italian court for another compensation of Third Reich war crimes, concerning Luigi Ferrini, who was deported to Germany as a forced labourer in August 1944. Germany argues immunity “We request a ruling on the principle of state immunity,” Germany’s lawyers said on the first day of the public hearing, on September 12. In their view, a potential upholding of the decision of the Italian court would have three dire consequences:  The whole system set up after the Second World War to address injuries caused by the war, which was the basis for comprehensive payments and reparations, would be put in question and opened to challenge before the domestic courts  All inter-state peace settlements concluded after an armed conflict would be put into jeopardy by allowing the domestic courts to re-examine and to reopen them  The international legal order would be seriously weakened. If domestic courts were able to pronounce judgment on foreign states, this could result in divergent, if not contradictory, decisions “State immunity cannot be regarded as absolute” was the Italian counter-argument. “The Italian courts found themselves in an exceptional situation: they provided the only means, a means of last resort, left to the victims to try to secure, for their benefit, respect for the peremptory prescriptions of international law in the field of reparations for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” their lawyers argued. The International Court of Justice is expected to deliver its decision in a few months.