Tycoon in war-crimes probe

Robert Maxwell

Media tycoon Robert Maxwell was being investigated for war crimes and was to be interviewed by police just before he mysteriously drowned 15 years ago.

Revelations that Maxwell, once a captain in the British Army, knew that he faced a possible life sentence for murdering an unarmed German civilian in 1945 lend support to the theory that he later took his own life.

A Metropolitan Police file shows that weeks before he died detectives had begun questioning members of Maxwell's platoon and were preparing a case for the Crown Prosecution Service.

He would have been told about the inquiry and knew that if found guilty he would be the first Briton to be prosecuted for war crimes.

The War Crimes Act 1991 was enacted just six months before Maxwell's body was found floating in the Atlantic on November 5, 1991 after he had been holidaying on his luxury yacht the Lady Ghislane. No one has been able to explain how he died.

But the police file shows that by that time officers had already been able to establish the location in Germany where Maxwell was alleged to have killed an unarmed German civilian in cold blood.

The shooting on April 3, 1945 was first disclosed by Maxwell's authorised biographer Joe Haines in 1988.

Maxwell is quoted in the book as describing how he tried to capture a German town by threatening the population with a mortar bombardment, a tactic that had proved successful on a nearby village hours earlier.

In a letter to his wife, published in the book, Maxwell writes: " ... so I sent one of the Germans to go and fetch the mayor of the town. In half an hour's time he turned up and I told him that he had to go to tell the Germans to surrender and hang the white flag otherwise the town will be destroyed. One hour later he came back saying that the soldiers will surrender and the white flag was put up so we marched off, but as soon as we marched off a German tank opened fire on us. Luckily he missed so I shot the mayor and withdrew."

The police file says: "The reported circumstances of the shooting gave rise to an allegation of war crimes. To some extent, the reporting of the shooting incident were confirmed by Mr Maxwell in an interview he gave in 1988 to the journalist Brian Walden."

But the police could do nothing until Parliament had enacted the war crimes legislation, which had been introduced to prosecute Nazi war criminals living in Britain.

It was only when a member of the public made a complaint under the new legislation that an official investigation could begin. Two officers from the police's historic war crimes unit began tracing members of Maxwell's platoon but had been unable to find a witness to the alleged shooting of the mayor.

On November 5, 1991, at the age of 68, Maxwell is presumed to have fallen overboard from the Lady Ghislane, which was cruising off the Canary Islands, and his body was subsequently found floating in the Atlantic Ocean. The official verdict was accidental drowning, though many people, including members of his own family, believe he took his own life.

In was only after his death that it emerged that he had plundered the Mirror Group pensions' funds to bail out his ailing media empire.

Shortly after his bodied was buried in Jerusalem the police passed the conclusions of their investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The police file says that "it was determined that the case could be progressed no further, and it was closed in March 1991."

The file also shows that, although a lot of work had gone into the case, the police had not been able to find a reliable witness to corroborate the account in the Haines biography. They had also raised concerns about having to rely on the quotes attributed to Maxwell in the book. But Maxwell would not have known this and may have felt that the net was closing in.

Maxwell was immensely proud of his war record. He had fought bravely with the British Army from the beaches of Normandy to the bombed-out buildings of Berlin. In January 1945 his courageous actions won him a Military Cross, which was awarded to him by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery.

But his hatred for the German people was borne out of his own bitter experiences. Later he was reported to have said that the two things he hated most were Germans and taxes.

By 1991 he had become very ill, with only one properly functioning lung and a serious heart condition. He must have known he was living on borrowed time and the prospect of spending his remaining life in prison for war crimes may have been too much for him to bear.

The only Briton to be convicted for war crimes in Britain was Anthony Sawoniuk, who was given two life sentences for the murder of 18 Jewish men and women in Eastern Europe during World War II. He died in prison last year aged 84.

- INDEPENDENT