Most Wanted Europe - Thursday, April 17, 2008 7:06 - 0 Comments

86-Year-Old SS Killer Faces Murder Charges

In what may lead to Germany’s last Nazi war crimes trial, a state prosecutor in the city of Dortmund plans to indict a former member of Hitler’s SS for murdering three unarmed Dutch civilians in 1944. But the defendant, 86-year-old Heinrich Boere, may escape prosecution yet again.

A German public prosecutor is preparing to file charges this week against an 86-year-old former SS soldier accused of killing three people in the Netherlands in 1944. If the case comes to trial it could be the last war crimes trial to take place in Germany.

Heinrich Boere shot dead three unarmed Dutch civilians between July and September 1944 when he was part of an SS hit squad that killed dozens of people in reprisals for attacks on Dutch Nazis by resistance fighters.

He confessed to the killings after he was captured by US forces at the end of World War II but he escaped from his prison camp and fled to Germany before he could be put on trial.

A Dutch court sentenced him to death in absentia in 1949 but legal loopholes, extradition hurdles and disagreement over the nature of his crimes enabled him to escape justice to this day.

Now Boere, born of a Dutch father and a German mother, may become the last person to be put on trial in Germany for Nazi war crimes. Continue…