BERLIN (AFP)---Two Dutch journalists accused of secretly filming an interview with a 90-year-old former SS assassin will stand trial next month on charges of breaching German privacy laws, a court said.

The two journalists, from Dutch current affairs programme Een Vandaag, stand accused of recording the interview with Heinrich Boere using a hidden camera when he was in a nursing home in Eschweiler, western Germany.

A spokesman for the regional court in nearby Aachen told AFP that the trial should begin on February 9 in Eschweiler.

"They could face three years in jail for revealing a conversation that should have remained private," the spokesman added.

Boere began a life sentence in December for shooting dead three civilians in Nazi-occupied Netherlands in 1944.

He confessed to shooting in cold blood pharmacist Fritz Bicknese, bicycle shop owner Teunis de Groot and Frans-Willem Kusters.

But he argued that as a member of an SS commando unit tasked with killing suspected resistance members or supporters, he risked being sent to a concentration camp if he refused.

An expert had declared Boere -- who suffers from heart problems and is wheelchair-bound -- fit enough to begin his term provided certain medical care was provided.

ejpress.org