Nazi Life Sentences Are 40 Years Too Late, Says Prodi

Italy's prime minister yesterday expressed frustration after a court handed out symbolic life sentences to the perpetrators of the country's worst second world war massacre - 63 years after it happened.

Romano Prodi said that, if the verdict "had been possible 40 years earlier, it would have had real value". On Saturday a military court in La Spezia convicted 10 aged former members of the SS of taking part in the killing of almost 800 people in and around the town of Marzabotto. Mr Prodi was speaking outside his home in Bologna, which is less than 20 miles away from the town.

Seven of the defendants, who were all in their 80s and 90s, were acquitted. None of those on trial, who are believed to live in Germany, attended the hearings.

The sentences represented the most important outcome so far of the discovery 13 years ago of files compiled after the war on the numerous massacres carried out by German troops as they retreated from the Allied invaders.

The Italian authorities - loath to embarrass their new cold war allies in West Germany - had ordered the files to be put into an archive cupboard that was then turned to the wall so it could not be easily opened.

The defendants were tried in connection with an orgy of violence in an area of intense partisan activity. The German commander was given life imprisonment in Italy in 1951. He was released on grounds of ill health in 1985.

SS troops lobbed grenades at civilians locked in a house. A pregnant Italian woman was cut open and her unborn child sliced in two.

Ferruccio Laffi, a survivor, told an Italian news agency: "I would have preferred to see them all convicted. But justice is done - at least a little bit."