Hamburg Court Tries Last of the Ss

A former Nazi SS officer appeared in a court in Hamburg yesterday accused of ordering the execution of 59 Italian prisoners almost 60 years ago.

Friedrich Engel, 93, admitted witnessing the killing at a Genoa prison in May 1944 and expressed regret for them, but denied being involved.

He faced a barrage of reporters and photographers as he entered the courtroom, threatening to sweep them aside with his walking stick.

Mr Engel told the court he was involved in selecting prisoners to be shot in retaliation for a bomb blast by partisans at a cinema which killed five German marines and injured 15 others.

But in an unemotional testimony he insisted that the navy had asked to carry out the killing. "As an SS major I couldn't have given orders to the marines," he told the court.

The prosecution said the prisoners were taken from
Marassi jail in Genoa to the Turchino pass outside the city and shot in Mr Engel's presence.

The chief prosecutor, Jochen Kuhlmann, told the court that the prisoners were divided into groups of six and one by one. Their corpses fell into a rough ditch dug by Jewish prisoners.

Mr Engel said the prisoners were "war criminals, because they acted as partisans against
the German armed forces". If convicted he may be jailed for life.

The trial is the culmination of years of trying to bring the former head of the SS in Genoa to justice.

Germany does not allow its citizens to be extradited for trial abroad, so Mr Engel was sentenced in abstentia in Italy in 1999, on 246 counts of murder in four separate incidents at the end of the war.

The German authorities attempted to bring him to trial in 1969, but the case was dropped.

The files from that case went missing and have never been found.

Italy put pressure on Germany to go ahead with the present trial, after a German television documentary last year which brought the case to light once again.

It showed a sprightly looking Mr Engel tending his garden at his detached house in a Hamburg suburb, where he has lived for 56 years. The researchers traced him after finding his name in the telephone directory.

Evidence will be given by the single living eyewitness, and the verdict is not expected before the end of next month.

About 20 Nazi war crimes investigations are still outstanding in Germany but lack of evidence and the age of the suspects will probably ensure that most of them never come to trial.