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CRIME

Germany charges 100-year-old former Nazi camp guard

A 100-year-old former concentration camp guard has been charged with complicity in 3,518 murders as Germany races to bring surviving Nazi staff to justice, prosecutors told AFP on Monday.

Germany charges 100-year-old former Nazi camp guard
A former watchtower on the grounds of the Sachsenhausen memorial site. Photo: DPA

The man stands accused of “knowingly and willingly” assisting in the murder of prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.

He is considered fit to stand trial despite his age, the public prosecutor's office in the town of Neuruppin confirmed after the story was reported by the NDR broadcaster.

The case comes days after German prosecutors charged a former secretary at a Nazi concentration camp with complicity in the murders of 10,000 people, in the first such case in recent years against a woman.

The 95-year-old accused had worked at the Stutthof camp near what was Danzig, now Gdansk, in then Nazi-occupied Poland.

Germany has been hunting down former Nazi staff since the 2011 conviction of former guard John Demjanjuk on the basis he served as part of the Nazi killing machine set a legal precedent.

Since then, courts have handed down several guilty verdicts on those grounds rather than for murders or atrocities directly linked to the individual accused.

Among those who were brought to late justice were Oskar Gröning, an accountant at Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard at the same camp.

Both were convicted of complicity in mass murder at the age of 94 but died before they could be imprisoned.

In the most recent verdict, a former SS guard, Bruno Dey, was found guilty at the age of 93 and was given a two-year suspended sentence.

A case was brought against another former guard at Stutthof in July over complicity in the murder of several hundred people.

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CRIME

Germany and Sweden arrest eight over Syria crimes against humanity

Investigators in Germany and Sweden on Wednesday arrested eight suspects allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government over alleged participation in crimes against humanity in Syria, prosecutors in both countries said.

Germany and Sweden arrest eight over Syria crimes against humanity

The suspects are accused of taking part in a “violent crackdown on a peaceful anti-government protest” in the Al-Yarmouk district in Damascus on July 13, 2012, Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said.

It said the four stateless Syrian Palestinians and Syrian national detained in Germany were “strongly suspected of killing and attempting to kill civilians, qualified as crimes against humanity and war crimes”.

It named the Syrian Palestinians as Jihad A., Mahmoud A., Sameer S. and Wael S. The Syrian national, identified as Mazhar J, is believed to have worked for the Syrian military intelligence service.

“They and other accessories specifically targeted the civilian protesters, shooting at them”, resulting in six deaths and other serious injuries, the prosecutor said.

The war between Assad’s troops and armed opposition groups, including Islamic State, erupted after the government repressed peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2011.

It has killed more than half a million people, forced millions to flee their homes, and ravaged Syria’s economy and infrastructure.

Wednesday’s arrests took place as a result of work carried out by an investigation team named “Caesar” after a defector who worked as a photographer for Syrian military police.

In 2013 he smuggled more than 50,000 photographs out of Syria, many of them documenting the deaths of prisoners in detention centres or military hospitals.

‘Severe and repeated’ abuse

German prosecutors said that those arrested in Sweden belonged to a pro-government militia which also participated in the crimes on July 13, 2012.

Ulrika Bentelius Egelrud, the Swedish prosecutor in charge of the investigation, said the suspects were arrested thanks to “good cooperation with Germany, Eurojust and Europol”.

READ ALSO: EU plagued by hundreds of dangerous crime gangs: Europol report

German prosecutors say the four Syrian Palestinians also “physically abused civilians from Al Yarmouk severely and repeatedly” between mid-2012 and 2014, including at militia checkpoints on the outskirts of the district, inhabited predominantly by Palestinians.

Germany let in hundreds of thousands of Syrians during the 2015-16 refugee influx and has arrested several Syrians since on its soil over crimes committed in their country.

It has used the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows the prosecution of certain serious crimes — regardless of where they took place — to try Syrians over atrocities committed during the country’s civil war.

One of the most high profile cases to be brought to trial was that of a former Syrian colonel who was found guilty in January 2022 of crimes against humanity committed in Damascus.

Last month a Swedish court acquitted a Syrian former general of war crimes charges, saying prosecutors had not proved his involvement in the army’s “indiscriminate attacks”.

Former brigadier general Mohammed Hamo, 65, was one of the highest-ranking Syrian military officials to stand trial in Europe.

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