Former SS member testifies in Nazi trial

A former Nazi SS member testified via video link from The Netherlands yesterday in the German trial of a comrade from his unit accused of three murders in 1944, a court spokesman said.

Jacobus Petrus Besteman gave evidence in the trial of Heinrich Boere, 88, who has been on trial since October for gunning down three Dutch civilians in 1944, spokesman Georg Winkel said, without giving further details.

Prosecutors say the three killings were among 54 murders carried out by their "Silbertanne" (Silver Fir) hit squad against Dutch civilians thought to be anti-German, in reprisals for attacks by resistance fighters.

Mr Boere has admitted on previous occasions the murders in the Dutch towns of Breda, Voorschoten and Wassenaar, saying he was following orders.

"Yes, I got rid of them," he told Focus magazine in 2008. "It was not difficult. You just had to bend a finger."

Born in Eschweiler, Germany, his family moved to The Netherlands when he was two. Mr Boere volunteered for the SS in 1940 and fought for the Germans on the Eastern Front, according to a statement by Mr Boere filed with the court.

Transferred back to The Netherlands, he was taken prisoner in 1945 before escaping in 1947. He says he spent "two or three years" in hiding before moving back to Eschweiler in 1954 and working as a coal miner until 1976.

He was sentenced to death in absentia by a special post-war tribunal in Amsterdam in 1949. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

Mr Boere remained a free man as Germany refused to extradite him, saying it was unable to determine if he was German or stateless. Germany as a rule does not extradite its citizens to stand trial in other countries.

The wheelchair-bound Boere, who lives in a nursing home, faces the rest of his life behind bars if convicted of murder.