Ex-Nazi Officer Gets Life Sentence

A Munich court sentenced a 90-year-year-old former Nazi officer, Josef Scheungraber, to life in prison for murdering Italian civilians in 1944.

Ex-Nazi Officer Gets Life Sentence
By JUDY DEMPSEY
Published: August 12, 2009

"BERLIN — A Munich court on Tuesday sentenced a 90-year-year-old former Nazi officer, Josef Scheungraber, to life in prison for murdering Italian civilians as a reprisal for the killing of two Nazi soldiers.

In one of Germany’s last Nazi trials, he was convicted on 10 counts of murder and also found guilty of attempted murder.

Mr. Scheungraber had denied allegations that he ordered the killings in June 1944 in Falzano di Cortona, near the Tuscan town of Arezzo, when he was a 25-year-old German army lieutenant in command of a company of engineers. The trial began last September after the presiding judge, Manfred Goetz, said Mr. Scheungraber was fit to stand trial.

Prosecutors said that, after Italian partisans had killed two German soldiers, Mr. Scheungraber commanded his soldiers to shoot three Italian men and one woman. The prosecutors said he then ordered that another 11 civilians be herded into a barn that was then blown up..." Full Story.

They probably won't have to spend much on housing him in prison now...