Ex-Nazi Convicted of Murder to Go Free
One of Germany’s last trials for Nazi crimes ended when a 93-year-old former SS officer was convicted of 59 counts of murder stemming from a 1944 massacre of Italian resistance fighters. But the court said Friedrich Engel is too old to serve his seven-year sentence.
The conviction followed earlier, failed attempts to prosecute him for the May 19, 1944, shootings on a mountain pass above Genoa, Italy.
Judge Rolf Seedorf said the evidence showed that Engel played a leading role in organizing the shootings in reprisal for an attack on a movie theater in the port city that killed five German navy men days earlier.
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