51 years ago, on 1968, Cuba and far left insurgents through the continent were on a manhunt against those responsible for killing Che Guevara, among them Bolivian captain Gary Prado Salmón. Prado was pursuing a few months of military education in Rio de Janeiro and his presence had been made public and fell into the sights of COLINA (National Liberation Command), one of the insurgent groups active at the time. A recruit stalked Prado and informed the group. Two killers, a driver and a manifesto writer prepared an assassination at the Botanical Garden. The two executors awaited for him to appear in a specific hour and place. A man did pass by and received 10 shots at point blank range. His briefcase was picked up and the assassins hurried out of the scene.
Upon opening their victim's case they were disappointed to find they had just murdered not Prado, but a German national -Eduard Ernest Thilo Otto Maximilian von Westernhagen. It's a bit hard to find information on him, but from what I gathered he was a Wehrmacht artillery officer on the Eastern Front, got commended during the battle of France, was seriously wounded in Berlin, spent some time in Soviet captivity, lived as a farmer in Argentina, returned to Germany to work with artillery in the Bundeswehr and found himself in Rio de Janeiro as an exchange student representing his country in the Command and General Staff School (ECEME). He was the first German officer in this course.

His death was a mystery and was speculated to have been the work of the KGB or Mossad at the time. He was fondly remembered in the School. All culprits were arrested over charges unrelated to this event. Only in 1987 the truth came to light.

Now the Army made an official statement in memory of this former ECEME student. He is called "a survivor of the Second World War and the Soviet totalitarian prisons whose life was shortened by an insane and cowardly terrorist act" and "had the mission to show the world the valour of Germany's army [i.e. the Bundeswehr], doing away with the negative image left by the Second World War".
This story is well known and I've read it years ago. Nobody ever made a fuss about Otto and his past, and the focus laid on COLINA and Gary Prado; Otto was just an unlucky bystander and many accounts don't even mention he was in the military. But in our hair-trigger environment the Army's statement drew much controversy and media attention, with "ARMY CELEBRATES NAZI OFFICER" headlines.