90-year-old former Nazi officer gets life term

MUNICH: A court yesterday jailed a 90-year-old former German army commander for life for ordering a massacre of Italian civilians in 1944, in one of Germany's last major Nazi war crimes trials.

The court in the southern city of Munich convicted Josef Scheungraber for the murder of 10 people in a mass killing that claimed the lives of 14 residents of Falzano di Cortona in Tuscany.

"Josef Scheungraber was the only officer in the company" of soldiers who carried out the murders in retaliation for an attack by Italian partisans that killed two German soldiers, presiding judge Manfred Goetzl said.