The German office investigating Nazi war crimes has recommended pursuing criminal charges against 30 former Auschwitz death camp personnel who served in World War II.
The Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes will send the files to state prosecutors, who would then decide whether to open an investigation against the Auschwitz guards, chief investigator Kurt Schrimm said on Tuesday.
Regional prosecutors must also judge whether the suspects – some of them aged up to 97 years old – are fit to stand trial by the courts.
The investigative office initially identified 49 former guards who were still alive, of whom 30 currently live in Germany and fall under investigation.
Nine of the guards have since died, while another seven live abroad and are undergoing further investigations.
Two people are missing, and one had already been under investigation in the German city of Stuttgart.
This is while the Hagen state court in Germany opened with the murder trial of Dutch-born German citizen Siert Bruins on Monday.
The 92-year-old former member of the Nazi Waffen SS is being tried on charges of murdering a Dutch resistance fighter in 1944. Despite his age, Bruins was found medically fit to stand trial. If convicted, he faces a possible life sentence.
In 1949, Bruins was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia in the Netherlands. Attempts to extradite him have failed because of his German citizenship, which was obtained through a policy initiated by Adolf Hitler that conferred citizenship on foreigners who served with the Nazis.
German federal prosecutors have recently started a new phase of investigations into alleged Nazi-era crimes.
The announcement comes after a 2011 conviction against former American autoworker, John Demjanjuk, whose case established that death camp guards could be convicted despite a lack of specific evidence of atrocities against them.
GMA/PR
Republished from: Press TV