(1) that a writ of habeas corpus be issued by this Court, directed to Lieutenant General Lucius D. Clay, Commanding General, United States Army Forces, Germany, commanding him to produce the body of the petitioner before your Court or some member thereof at a time and place therein to be specified, then and there to receive and to do what your honorable Court shall order concerning his confinement and trial as an accused war criminal and that he be ordered returned to the status of, and internment as a prisoner of war in conformity with the provisions of Article 9 of the Geneva Convention of July 27, 1929, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war and of paragraph 82 of the Rules of Land Warfare [U. S. Field Manual 27-10], and
(2) that a writ of prohibition be issued by this Court prohibiting the respondent from proceeding with the trial and that the petitioner be discharged from the offenses and confinement aforesaid,
(3) that the costs of the court shall not be levied, because I am a prisoner of war and my property has been confiscated by the Control Council for Germany.
As reasons for the above requests I offer the following:
The sentence imposed on me not only violates valid international law, but also legal principles whose observance by all the courts of the United States is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.
The basic principle that has been violated is that no one may be deprived of the judge [justice] provided for by law and that each defendant must be granted a regular trial.
The following violations are charged in particular:
The sentence was passed in violation of Article 63 of the Geneva Convention of 1929. I am a medical officer and was Generalarzt in the Reserve, which is equivalent to a brigadier general in the Medical Corps in the American Army. In May 1941 I was in the Luftwaffe hospital at Kitzbuehl in Austria and became a prisoner of war. Shortly afterwards I was flown to England and taken to Camp Latimer (Bucks), known as POW Camp 7. There I was registered as a prisoner of war in the middle of June 1945 and received the POW number A 938984. I was informed that I was a British prisoner of war. I am still a prisoner of war today, because I was neither discharged de facto nor was I ever given discharge papers or shown discharge papers that had been filled out. As a prisoner of war I have a right to have my case tried by a court martial, as would be correct in case an Allied medical officer of equal rank were to be indicted on the same charges. This Court must not only be an officers’ court composed of judges holding corresponding rank, but it must also be a professional court, because it must be composed of medical officers. Since the American Military Tribunal I is not such a court, it was, for example, not in a position to correctly judge my activity as scientific consultant medical officer in relationship to that of a commanding officer.
Article 63 of the Geneva Convention of 1929 purposely makes no differentiation between crimes that a prisoner of war commits during his prisoner of war captivity and those which he committed before he became a prisoner of war. In accordance with the purpose and spirit of the Geneva Convention of 1929, the prisoners of war are to be protected by this provision from being brought up before a special court or from any limitation of their legal rights.
(2) There is a violation of Article 64 of the Geneva Convention because the legal remedies that would be available to an Allied medical officer in a corresponding case cannot be used in the case of the sentence that has been imposed upon me, because Article 15 of Ordinance No. 7 of the American Military Government in Germany provides that the verdicts of the Military Tribunals are final and incontestable.