89-yr-old former Nazi officer to go on trial from Monday

MUNICH: A judge is expected to decide on Monday whether an 89-year-old former Nazi officer convicted of killing 14 civilians in wartime Italy is fit to stand trial in Germany for those same crimes, a court spokeswoman said on Thursday.

A court-appointed expert had previously determined that Josef Scheungraber was fit to appear in court, though only for a few hours at a time due to his advanced age.

Margarete Noetzel, a spokeswoman for the Munich state court, said a judge wants to see Scheungraber in person before setting a schedule for the trial.

Prosecutors accuse Scheungraber, who in World War II was stationed in Italy as the commander of a mountain infantry battalion, of ordering his troops to kill the civilians at Falzano di Cortona, near the Tuscan town of Arezzo, in June 1944 as retribution for the killing of two German soldiers.

Scheungraber's troops shut 11 people in a farmhouse and blew up the building.

Prosecutors based the charges on documents and testimony from a survivor of the massacre.

In September 2006 a military court in La Spezia, Italy, tried Scheungraber in absentia and convicted him along with another German soldier of complicity in murdering civilians, sentencing them to life in prison