Germany will try an 86-year-old former SS member next year who confessed to killing three Dutch civilians more than 60 years ago, a court official said.
Heinrich Boere will be tried in Aachen in early 2009, the chief justice of the city's district court said today.
Boere was captured by US forces in the Netherlands after the war and confessed to killing the Dutch civilians as a member of an SS hit squad targeting anti-Nazi fighters.
He then escaped and fled to Germany, before being sentenced to death in absentia in the Netherlands in 1949. The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre lists Boere as one of the top 10 Nazi war criminals still at large.
Germany refused a 1980 Dutch extradition request because of complications over Boere's citizenship. Efforts to convict him in Germany also failed.
Germany's Bildnewspaper said on Thursday that organisational issues and health problems might enable Boere to avoid being tried, but the Aachen district court chief justice denied this.
"As soon as we have recruited an expert adviser and proved the competency of the court, the trial will begin," she said.
Reuters