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| Ex-SS man given life for murders | |
| (30 minutes later) | |
| A German court has sentenced an 88-year-old former member of the Nazi SS to life in prison for the murder of three Dutch civilians in 1944. | A German court has sentenced an 88-year-old former member of the Nazi SS to life in prison for the murder of three Dutch civilians in 1944. |
| Heinrich Boere had told the court in Aachen that he killed a bicycle shop owner, a pharmacist and a member of the resistance as part of a death squad. | |
| But he said he was following orders and would have been shot for not doing so. | But he said he was following orders and would have been shot for not doing so. |
| Prosecutors said Boere was a willing member of the SS, which he joined after the Netherlands was invaded in 1940. | |
| But correspondents say that there remains some doubt over whether Boere, who uses a wheelchair and lives in a nursing home, will actually go to jail. | |
| A 90-year-old former German infantry commander, Josef Scheungraber, was given a life sentence by a German court in August, but remains free while his appeal is heard. | |
| It was not immediately clear whether Boere would appeal. | |
| Retaliation | |
| In December, Boere testified that he had shot Fritz Bicknese, a chemist and father of 12; bicycle seller Teun de Groot, who helped Jews go into hiding; and Dutch resistance member Frans Kusters. | |
| I knew that if I didn't carry out my orders I would be breaking my oath and would be shot myself Heinrich Boere | |
| He told the state court that he and fellow members of the SS Silbertanne (Silver Pine) death squad had been informed by their superiors that the men were to be killed in retaliation for attacks by the resistance. | |
| "I knew that if I didn't carry out my orders I would be breaking my oath and would be shot myself," he said. | |
| "At no time in 1944 did I act with the feeling that I was committing a crime," he added. "Today, after 65 years, I naturally see things from a different perspective." | |
| But the presiding judge, Gerd Nohl, said all three killings had been carried out "on a totally random basis" and constituted murder. | |
| Boere, who was born near Aachen to a Dutch father and German mother, moved to the Netherlands when he was an infant. | |
| He was 18 when he joined the Waffen SS, shortly after the Germans overran his hometown of Maastricht in 1940. After fighting on the Russian front, he ended up back in the Netherlands as part of the Silbertanne squad. | |
| Anti-Nazi protesters gathered by the court when the trial began in October | |
| He admitted the killings to the Dutch authorities when he was in captivity after World War II, but managed to escape from his POW camp and returned to Germany, where he has since lived. | |
| In 1949, a tribunal in Amsterdam sentenced him to death in his absence - later commuted to life in prison. A Dutch extradition request was turned down by the West German government in the early 1980s. | |
| Following a request that Boere serve his sentence in Germany, an appeals court ruled three years ago that the 1949 trial was unfair. | |
| He was eventually indicted in April 2008, but a court then said he was unfit to stand trial, largely because of heart problems. The decision was eventually overruled on appeal last July. |