Trial of former Nazi officer resumes

The trial has resumed of a 93-year-old former Nazi SS officer who has denied ordering the shooting of 59 Italian prisoners more than 50 years ago.

Dubbed the 'Butcher of Genoa' by the Italian media, Friedrich Engel is charged with ordering the shootings in May 1944 in revenge for an attack on a cinema for German soldiers.

He says he had been present at the killings only as a witness.

The trial resumes in a Hamburg court after being adjourned last month.

Engel has already told the Hamburg court as SS leader in Genoa he was involved in selecting prisoners to be shot.

But he said the German navy had asked his superiors to carry out the executions because six marines had been killed in the cinema attack.

Engel last year acknowledged a role in the reprisal murders of 59 prisoners and expressed regret, but said he was carrying out orders.

The former leader of the elite SS force in Genoa was sentenced by an Italian court in 1999 in absentia to life imprisonment for killing at least 246 Italian prisoners in four separate massacres in the final two years of the war.

Engel is being tried in Germany because German law bars the extradition of citizens for crimes committed abroad. A verdict is expected later this month.