BILFINGER: No, I know nothing about that.
DR. MERKEL: Can you say anything about the grounds for protective custody? On the strength of what legal rulings was protective custody decreed after 1933?
BILFINGER: Protective custody was based on the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State, of February 1933, in which a number of the basic rights of the Weimar Constitution were rescinded.
DR. MERKEL: Was there later a decree by the Minister of the Interior which dealt with protective custody, at the end of 1936 or the beginning of 1937?
BILFINGER: Yes, at that time the Protective Custody Law was drawn up. The legal basis as such remained in force. At that time power to decree protective custody was confined to the Secret State Police. Before that a number of other offices, rightly or wrongly, had decreed protective custody. To prevent this, protective custody was then confined to the Secret State Police.
DR. MERKEL: Is it correct that for some time you were in France. In what capacity were you there?
BILFINGER: In the late summer and autumn of 1943 I was commander of the Security Police in France, in Toulouse.
DR. MERKEL: Do you know anything about an order from the RSHA, or from the commander of the Sipo for France, or from individual district commanders, to the effect that ill-treatment or torture was to be applied when prisoners were interrogated?
BILFINGER: No, I do not know of such orders.
DR. MERKEL: Then how do you explain the ill-treatment and atrocities which actually took place in connection with interrogations, proof of which has been given by the Prosecution?