By DPA,
Munich: A 90-year-old former Nazi army officer was given a life sentence by a court in Munich Tuesday, for ordering the murder of 14 civilians in an Italian village in June 1944.
Josef Scheungraber, whose case will probably be one of the last WWII war crimes trials, was convicted of ordering the death of the civilians in Tuscany in retaliation for the killing of two members of his mountain-pioneer unit by Italian partisans.
The jury gave the guilty verdict after a trial lasting nearly eleven months.
The court heard that four of the killed civilians had been shot by the German unit, and ten were killed when their house was blown up.
Surviving family members of the victims were present in the court for the verdict, and greeted the decision with applause.
Judge Mandred Goetzl said that Scheungraber, the commandant of the unit, had “avenged the death of his soldiers” on the civilians.
Scheungraber himself said nothing following the reading of the sentence, and has repeatedly denied any participation in the killings.
In 2006 Scheungraber was sentenced in absentia by an Italian court to life imprisonment.
Munich prosecutors are also preparing the case against John Demjanjuk, an alleged former concentration camp guard who was extradited from the US in May.