Italy court sentences 9 former Nazis to life in prison News
Italy court sentences 9 former Nazis to life in prison
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[JURIST] An Italian military tribunal in Verona on Wednesday convicted and sentenced nine German soldiers [Corriere del Veneto report] for participation in the murder of approximately 350 Italian civilians during World War 2. Three alleged participants died before the trial. The accused were all members of the Hermann Goring Division and killed Italians to stifle the resistance movement toward the end of the war, terrorizing five villages in Northern Italy.

In May, a military tribunal in Rome convicted three former German soldiers [JURIST report] of multiple murders committed during World War II. The three men were tried in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment [UPI report] for their parts in the massacre of 184 civilians in the village of Padule di Fucecchio in Tuscany on August 23, 1944. A fourth defendant died during trial at the age of 100, a reminder that recent trials for Nazi atrocities will likely be some of the last. In May, Hungarian court began the trial [JURIST report] of accused Nazi Sandor Kepiro, who was named as the world’s most wanted Nazi war crimes suspect by the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) [advocacy website], a Jewish human rights organization committed to finding and prosecuting Holocaust war criminals. Also in May, a German court convicted [JURIST report] Nazi guard John Demjanjuk [NNDB profile; JURIST news archive] for his role in murdering 28,000 at the Sobidor Death Camp. Demjanjuk, 91, was sentenced to five years in prison but released because of his advanced age and because appeals could take years.