[JURIST] Italy's highest court on Thursday upheld life sentences handed down to three former Nazi SS officers for their role in a massacre during WWII that left hundreds of Italian villagers in Tuscany dead. All three men are in their 80s and were members of an SS regiment that surrounded the village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema in August 1944 and slaughtered 560 civilians [DW backgrounder], many of them women and children. It is doubtful that any of the men will actually serve their sentence as a result of their age and the unlikely possibility of extradition from Germany to Italy. The court also required the men to reimburse the court for the cost of the proceedings.

Ten other former members of the SS regiment were convicted and sentenced to life in prison [JURIST report] for their roles in the massacre in June 2005. Italian authorities began their investigation into the atrocity several years ago when they discovered Allied reports of the killings, which were supposedly meant to weed out partisans seeking refuge within the village. Reuters has more. Il Messagerro has local coverage, in Italian.