Nazi hunter seeks probe of Dane for war crimes

A leading Nazi hunter has asked Denmark to investigate a 90-year-old Dane suspected of being involved in the mass murder of Jews in Belarus during World War II.

Ephraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center filed the request on Tuesday with the Copenhagen police after the Justice Ministry turned down a similar request last year, saying it was not their matter.

Zuroff said they had a strong case against Helmuth Leif Rasmussen because of documents found by Danish historians published in a book last year, and that they were looking at other cases. The book, En skole i vold (A Book of Violence), claims that 1,400 Jews died in Belarus when Rasmussen, now known by the name Rasboel, was in the "inner circle" of the Bobruisk camp run by the SS.