Dutch Nazi (92) faces life in jail for 1944 resistance murder

A Dutch national who joined the Nazi Waffen SS and now lives in Germany should be jailed for life for the 1944 murder of a Dutch resistance fighter, the German public prosecutor said on Thursday.

Siert Bruins, 92, is currently on trial for killing resistance leader Aldert Klaas Dijkema, who was shot dead near the German border in 1944.

 

Bruins, who now has German nationality, was convicted of murdering two Dutch Jews in 1980 and served eight years in jail. He was sentenced to death in absentia by the Dutch courts in 1949. This was later commuted to life imprisonment.

 

Extradition

 

Efforts to have him brought back to the Netherlands failed because Germany does not extradite its own citizens.

In 2010, another former SS officer, Heinrich Boere, was found guilty of murdering three Dutch civilians during World War II and given a life sentence. He died last month.

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