Deutsche Welle, 2 Sep 2013
A
92-year-old former member of the SS is to go on trial in Germany for the 1944
murder of a Dutch resistance fighter. Some 70 years after the end of World War
Two, the trial is expected to be one of the last of its kind.
Dutch-born
German national Siert Bruins is to appear in court on Monday when his trial
opens in the western German town of Hagen.
He stands
accused of killing Dutch resistance fighter Aldert Klaas Dijkema in September
1944 while stationed on the Dutch-German border. Dijkema was shot four times in
the back shortly after he was captured by Bruins and an accomplice.
Bruins has
admitted that as a member of the Waffen SS, the military arm of the Nazi Party,
he was present at the time of the murder. He denies the killing, however,
accusing his accomplice - who has since died - of pulling the trigger.
The
92-year-old faces a life sentence if convicted.
A court in
the Netherlands convicted Bruins in absentia of participating in three
shootings, including that of Dijkema, in the immediate aftermath of the Second
World War. He was sentenced to death in 1949, a ruling later commuted to life
imprisonment.
Bruins
avoided serving his sentence having fled to Germany, which does not extradite
its own nationals. He had been awarded German citizenship via the Fuehrer's
Decree in May 1943, which conferred German nationality on all foreigners who
worked for the Nazis.
He did
serve a seven-year jail term in Germany in the 1980's, however, after a court
convicted him of being an accessory in the murder of two Jewish brothers in the
Netherlands in April 1945.
Wartime
convictions dwindling
Roughly
13,000 German or Nazi soldiers have been found guilty of war crimes since the
Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946. As was one of the last suspected Nazi criminals
to be charged by German authorities, Bruins' his trial is likely to be one of
the last.
Another
former SS officer Heinrich Boere was sentenced to life in March 2010 for the
murder of three Dutch civilians.
An
estimated 30,000 Dutch citizens collaborated with the Nazis during their
occupation of the Netherlands.
ccp/kms (AFP, dpa)
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