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Former Waffen SS member on trial
An 88-year-old Dutch man accused of killing three Dutch civilians during the Second World War has been put on trial in Germany.
Heinrich Boere, who was part of Hitler's Waffen SS death squad, has avoided being imprisoned for six decades - first by escaping a prisoner of war camp in the Netherlands, and later by eluding German courts.
Boere is on trial at the state court in Aachen for the murder of three men - a bicycle shop owner, a pharmacist and another civilian - and has admitted to shooting them down.
Some months after the Nazis occupied his home town of Maastricht and the rest of the Netherlands, Boere volunteered to join the Waffen SS.
He served on the Russian front before becoming part of a death squad that was code named "Silbertanne" or "Silver Pine", and which was largely made up of other Dutch volunteers like himself.
The squad was to target persons - mainly Dutch - who carried out resistance attacks against German occupational forces and collaborators.
When the war ended he was captured by the Allies and remained as a prisoner of war in a camp in the Netherlands, but he managed to flee to Germany before he could be brought to trial.
In 1949 he was given a death sentence in absentia in the Netherlands - later commuted to life imprisonment.
However, Boere has not served any jail time as German courts refused both to extradite him or force him to serve the Dutch life imprisonment sentence in Germany.
Copyright © Press Association 2009
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Posted by: zaynacrews | 11/01/2009 at 12:19 AM