101-year-old concentration camp guard sentenced — RT World News

A 101-year-old man, who German authorities suspect was a guard at the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen, will spend the next five years behind bars, a court in the city of Brandenburg an der Havel ruled on Tuesday.

Josef S. was found guilty of aiding and abetting the murder of over 3,500 prisoners as well as attempted murder. In pronouncing the sentence, the judges acceded to the prosecutor’s request.

The court found that the defendant had served in a battalion of guards stationed at the concentration camp from 1942 to 1945. Presiding judge Udo Lechtermann noted that S. had “willingly supported mass extermination” prisoners in the camps.

During the proceedings, defense attorney Stefan Waterkamp argued that his client should be acquitted because the prosecutor’s office failed to prove the defendant’s complicity in a particular murder case.

According to German media, Josef S., 101, is the oldest Nazi criminal to stand trial in the country.

The man himself had maintained his innocence from the very start of the trial in October 2021. In his last words, S. insisted that he had not worked at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

The hearings took place in a sports hall near the home of the elderly defendant.

The process had to be suspended several times due to the man’s health issues.

According to the indictment, S. was found complicit in the execution of detainees, including Soviet prisoners of war, by firing squad and poison gas. Moreover, the very conditions in which the detainees had been held were found to be deadly by the court. However, the accused was found not guilty of the personal murder of one of these people.