Rome’s military tribunal convicted a 90-year-old former Nazi in absentia on Friday for his role in the 1943 execution of 120 Italian officers on the Greek island of Kefalonia and sentenced him to life in prison.

Alfred Stork’s conviction was the first in Italy for the Kefalonia massacres, in which thousands of Italian soldiers were killed in September, 1943. Previous attempts at prosecution were closed because the defendants had died or those responsible could not be properly identified, military prosecutor Marco De Paolis said.

Stork, who now lives in Germany, was tried as a member of an execution squad that killed the 120 Italian officers, including division commander General Antonio Gardin, on Sept. 23, 1943, De Paolis said.

Between 3,000 and 4,000 Italian soldiers were killed in the week-long massacre in September, 1943. Italian troops occupying Greece with their German allies suddenly found themselves in enemy territory when Italy signed an armistice with the Allies following the fall of fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

“There were numerous massacres in those five or seven days, all over the island. Some were killed fighting, others were shot down, some were arrested and killed after being held for a day,” De Paolis said.

Two German officers were convicted at the Nuremberg trials of the Kefalonia massacres, along with other war crimes, and sentenced from 12 to 20 years. Other prosecution attempts in Germany and Italy in the 1950s and 1960s failed.

De Paolis said he launched this investigation in 2009 at the request of two victims’ children, identifying Stork after receiving files from another failed attempt at prosecuting 80 suspects in the early 2000s.

He said he felt it was “useless” to petition for Stork’s extradition for trial since Germany has refused in the past to turn over its citizens even when convicted of Nazi-era crimes.

Efraim Zuroff, the head Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, noted that Italian military courts have in recent years convicted many Germans for wartime massacres but always in absentia because of Germany’s refusal to extradite its citizens. Italy has requested in previous cases for those convicted and sentenced to life to serve their time in Germany.

“The Italians have made a very admirable effort in the past decade to find and bring to court, not in a literal sense, individuals responsible for some terrible atrocities,” Zuroff said in a phone call from Jerusalem.

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