1.
GV OF: city of Lvov in Ukraine.
0.05

2.
GV: delegation of Dutch lawyers inspecting snow-covered ground.
0.10

3.
CU: cameraman having a cigarette and watching
1.03

4.
CU: of Pieter Menten, in German uniform, accused of murdering hundreds of Jews during World War II. (Black and White)
2.04

5.
GV: memorial to dead Jew, PAN ACROSS To Dutch lawyers discussing the area where the alleged atrocities were committed. (3 shots)
0.45

6.
GV: skeleton out on sheet.
0.50

7.
CU: photo of skull with bullet hole.
0.50

8.
CU ZOOM OUT TO GV lawyers talking.
1.05

9.
CU: memorial plaque PULL BACK TO lawyers.
1.14

10.
CU: roses PAN UP TO plaque.
1.20


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Mr. Menten served five months of an eight-month prison sentence at the end of the war for collaborating with the Nazis. He is a diabetic and is being held in a prison hospital.




Initials RH/MW/DK/1643



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: A team of lawyers from the Netherlands has gone to the Ukraine in the Soviet Union to investigate alleged war crimes committed by wealthy Dutch industrialist Pieter Menten, who is being held by Dutch authorities in The Hague pending the findings of the investigation. Menten has been accused of murdering hundreds of Jews in what was then Poland, but is snow part of the Soviet Union, and of confiscating or stealing vast art collections belonging to Polish Jews.

SYNOPSIS: The investigators are concentrating their probe in the Ukramain town of Lvov, one of two places the Soviet authorities say massacres occurred.

Mr Menten has denied allegations that he ordered the killings while head of a Nazi S.S. battalion in July and August 1941, when the area was under German occupation.

Informed sources say the investigators have found three witnesses to the Lvov massacre. One lives in Warsaw and the only other two live in Sweden, and the United States. At least five people have also described another massacre carried out during the same period at the nearby village of Podgorodtsy. The graves of the Podgorodtsy victims were opened last summer and the skeletons examined by doctors for clues.

Menten disappeared from his home near Amsterdam before police called to question his last December. He was discovered in Switzerland and was handed back to the Dutch by the Swiss authorities. The Dutch authorities have also supplied Moscow with a list of Mr Menten's paintings and tapestries, to check them against the ones that went missing during the war.