BERLIN (AP) — Admitted Nazi hit man Heinrich Boere will stand
trial for murder in Germany for the execution-style killings
of three Dutch civilians during World War II, a court ruled
Tuesday after years of legal wrangling.
A Cologne appeals court ruled that the 88-year-old is fit for trial despite medical
problems, overruling a lower court's decision this year.
Dortmund prosecutor Ulrich Maass,
who brought the charges against Boere, said that no more
appeals were possible.
"This is very positive
news," he told The Associated Press.
Boere's attorney, Gordon Christiansen,
said he had no immediate comment.
Boere is accused of the 1944 killings
of three men in the Netherlands when he was a member of a
Waffen SS death squad that targeted civilians in reprisal
killings for resistance attacks.
In January, the Aachen state court
ruled that he was not fit to stand trial on the charges,
after hearing testimony that he suffered a serious heart
condition and could not take the stress.
That ruling was based on a two-day
medical exam.
Maass appealed, saying that, despite
Boere's old age and poor health, he should be made to answer
for his crimes.
In overturning the lower court's ruling,
the Cologne court interviewed caregivers from the retirement
home where Boere lives, and said it concluded he could stand
trial.
Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter
at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, hailed the decision and pushed
for a speedy start to the trial.
"We are very pleased that
the authorities have decided to prosecute Heinrich Boere
— this is an important step in finally achieving justice
in his case," he told The AP in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.
The son of a Dutch man and German
woman, Boere was 18 when he joined the Waffen SS — the fanatical
military organization faithful to Adolf Hitler's ideology
— at the end of 1940, only months after the Netherlands had
fallen to the Nazi blitzkrieg.
Boere was sentenced to death in absentia
by a Dutch court in 1949, later commuted to life imprisonment.
The Netherlands has sought Boere's
extradition, but a German court refused it in 1983 refused
on grounds that he might have German citizenship. Germany
at the time had no provision to extradite its nationals.
A state court in Aachen ruled in 2007
that Boere could legally serve his Dutch sentence in Germany,
but the appeals court in Cologne overturned the ruling, calling
the 1949 conviction invalid because Boere was not there to
present a defense. He had fled to Germany.
Maass reopened the case, relying heavily
on statements to Dutch police preserved in the court file
in which Boere details the killings, almost gunshot by gunshot.
Besides the police statements, Boere
also gave an interview to the Dutch Algemeen Dagblad newspaper
in 2006 in which he recalled slaying bicycle-shop owner Teun
de Groot when he answered the doorbell at his home in the
town of Voorschoten.
"When we knew for sure
we had the right person, we shot him dead, at the door," he was quoted as saying. "I didn't feel anything, it was work. Orders were orders, otherwise it would have
meant my skin. Later it began to bother me. Now I'm sorry."
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