Related News
Ex-Nazi Waffen SS member charged with murder
Print Edition
Germany put a 92-year-old former member of the Nazi Waffen SS on trial yesterday on charges he murdered a Dutch resistance fighter in 1944.
Dutch-born Siert Bruins, who is now German, entered the Hagen state courtroom using a walker, but appeared alert and attentive as the proceedings opened.
No pleas are made in the German system, and Bruins offered no statement. His attorney, Klaus-Peter Kniffka, said after the short 35-minute opening session it was unlikely his client would ever address the court personally.
“I’ll probably deliver a defense declaration, but it depends upon the course of the trial,” he said.
The trial comes amid a new phase of German Nazi-era investigations, with prosecutors this week expected to announce they are recommending the pursuit of possible charges against about 40 former Auschwitz guards.
The renewed probes of death camp guards come after the case of former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk, who died last year while appealing his 2011 conviction for accessory to murder after allegations he served in Sobibor.
His case established that death camp guards could be convicted as accessories to murder, even if there was no specific evidence of atrocities against them.
Bruins had long been on the radar of German legal authorities and already served time in the 1980s for his role in the wartime slaying of two Dutch Jews.
Bruins was also already convicted and sentenced to death in absentia in the Netherlands in 1949 in a case that involved the killing of the resistance fighter.
The sentence was later commuted to life in prison, but attempts to extradite him were unsuccessful because he had obtained German citizenship through a policy instituted by Adolf Hitler to confer citizenship on foreigners who served the Nazi military.
Ulrich Sander, spokesman for an organization representing the victims of Nazi crimes, said the decision to bring Bruins to trial again was a good one.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
