BERLIN — A 90-year-old former German army officer convicted of Nazi-era war crimes said Wednesday that the verdict against him was a "swindle."

Josef Scheungraber said in a television interview in his native Bavaria that he was innocent and would appeal the verdict.

"They cannot lock me up because this whole nonsense is invented and made up," he said, according to a copy of the interview provided to The Associted Press. "Now they've got to start from the beginning again."

The Munich state court convicted Scheungraber on 10 counts of murder and one of attempted murder on Tuesday, sentencing him to life in prison. He will remain free until his appeals are exhausted.

Scheungraber was a 25-year-old Wehrmacht lieutenant during the June 1944 killings in Falzano di Cortona, near the Tuscan town of Arezzo.

The court ruled that, after partisans had killed two German soldiers, Scheungraber ordered 11 civilians to be herded into a barn that was then blown up. One teenage boy survived the blast.

"It was about revenge," said Presiding Judge Manfred Goetzl when issuing the verdict.

In the interview, Scheungraber questioned the ability of the panel of judges who heard the case over the last 11 months.

"When I looked over at these judges — not one of them was even alive 65 years ago," he said. "They are all at most 55. What kind of a clue do they have about war, about Nazism, about the Third Reich?"

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