A Munich State Court has sentenced Nazi criminal Josef Scheungraber, aged 90, for the murder of 10 civilians in Tuscany in 1944. He was found guilty of mass murder and convicted to the maximum sentence available amidst applause by the public who attended the verdict.

He had already been convicted to a life sentence in 2006 during a trial held in absentia in Italy.

At the time of the massacre, in June 1944, Scheungraber was a 25-year-old lieutenant. After locals from the Tuscan town of Falzano di Cortona killed two Nazi soldiers, Scheungraber ordered 11 civilians to be forced into a barn that was then blown up. Only one survived the explosion, a teenage boy. Scheungraber also faced charges that he ordered the execution of three Italian men and a woman shortly before the barn massacre, although he was acquitted of these.

Scheungraber maintained his innocence, claiming he was not in the town at the time of the massacre.

The testimony of a former work colleague proved valuable in securing the conviction. The witness told the court how Scheungraber told him in the 1970s that he could not return to Italy because of the “shooting a dozen men and blowing them into the air.”

The key testimony, however, was given by the sole survivor of the massacre, Gino Massetti who recalled an officer giving the orders shortly before the explosion, but even he could not testify with certainty that this was indeed Scheungraber.

(Source: Euro Weekly News)