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Nazi war criminal jailed for life | |
(20 minutes later) | |
A former German infantry commander has been jailed for life for his role in the killing of 14 civilians in an Italian village during World War II. | |
A Munich state court found 90-year-old Josef Scheungraber guilty of ordering the killings, in what was one of the last Nazi crimes trials in Germany. | |
Scheungraber had previously been sentenced in absentia by an Italian military court to life in prison. | |
The killings took place in Falzano di Cortona, in Tuscany, on 26 June 1944. | |
Scheungraber denied the charges, saying he handed the victims to the military police and did not know what happened to them. | |
The court found Scheungraber, as a 25-year-old Wehrmacht lieutenant, had ordered the brutal killings in revenge for an attack by Italian partisans that left two German soldiers dead. | |
German troops shot dead a 74-year-old woman and three men in the street before forcing 11 others into a farmhouse which they then blew up. | |
Only the youngest - a 15-year-old boy named Gino Massetti - survived, and he gave evidence during the trial in Munich. | Only the youngest - a 15-year-old boy named Gino Massetti - survived, and he gave evidence during the trial in Munich. |
Scheungraber, the former commander of a company of engineers, had lived for decades as a free man, and served on the town council in Ottobrunn, outside Munich. | |
He ran a furniture shop, attended German veterans' marches and recently received an award for municipal service. | He ran a furniture shop, attended German veterans' marches and recently received an award for municipal service. |