Dutch war criminal Siert Bruins dies at the age of 94

Dutch war criminal Siert Bruins has died at the age of 94, local paper Dagblad van het Noorden reports on Tuesday.

Bruins, who lived in Germany and has German nationality, died two weeks ago, the paper says.

In 2013, Bruins went trial on for killing Dutch resistance leader Aldert Klaas Dijkema, who was shot dead near the German border in 1944. However, the case was dropped when judges said there was insufficient evidence to proceed, partly because there were no witnesses left alive.

Bruins, a member of the Waffen SS, 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 for the murder of Dijkema in 1949. This was later commuted to life imprisonment.

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

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