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SS man to stand trial in Germany for Dutch murders

AFP
AFP - [email protected]
SS man to stand trial in Germany for Dutch murders
An undated photo of another Waffen SS unit. Photo: DPA

An 86-year-old former SS member sentenced to death in absentia in 1949 for the murder of three Dutch civilians during World War II is finally to face trial in Germany, prosecutors said on Monday.

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Dutch-born Heinrich Boere, who fled to Germany in 1947 where he has been ever since and now lives in a retirement home near Aachen in the west of the country will be indicted "soon," Dortmund prosecutor Ulrich Maass said.

His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment but he remained in Germany where he worked as a miner. In 1980, German authorities turned down an extradition request from the Netherlands.

Dutch authorities in 2003 requested for Boere to serve out his sentence in Germany but last July a court in the west German city of Cologne rejected this, saying that it did not recognize the 1949 verdict.

Boere joined the Waffen SS in the German-occupied Netherlands and as a member of the Silbertanne or Silver Fir death squad killed three Dutch civilians, German daily Bild reported.

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