Italy Jails Ex-Nazi for WWII Atrocity

Former SS Capt. Erich Priebke was jailed Tuesday after Italy’s highest court rejected his last-ditch appeal against a life sentence for taking part in the country’s worst World War II atrocity.

Priebke, 85, was sentenced in March to life in prison by an Italian military appeal court for participating in the 1944 massacre of 335 men and boys at the Ardeatine Caves near Rome. The sentence was suspended pending the ex-Nazi’s appeal.

Priebke was kept under house arrest until his transfer Tuesday to a military prison on the outskirts of the capital.

Neighbors cried “Gas him!” as paramilitary police came to remove Priebke from the Rome home of his lawyer, where he was living since last year.

“I am the last prisoner of war. My persecutors have completed their vendetta. Now they must let me live in peace,” he told Italian radio before being taken away.

Berlin-born Priebke fled to Argentina after the war and lived there until being extradited to Italy in 1995.

The court also confirmed the life sentence for former Nazi Maj. Karl Hass, condemned along with Priebke for his part in the massacre, which was in reprisal for the killings of 33 German soldiers by Italian partisans.

Priebke was responsible for ticking off the names of victims on a list as they arrived at the caves, and he admitted killing two people. Both he and Hass, 86, admitted to participating in the atrocity but insisted that they were obeying orders.

Hass, who has been in an Italian clinic, remained there Tuesday despite the court ruling because doctors said he was too ill to be detained in prison.