Former German soldiers jailed for 1944 massacre

An Italian court has sentenced two former German soldiers to life in prison for their role in the 1944 massacre of 16 people near the Tuscan town of Arezzo, a lawyer said today.

The military court in the northern port town of La Spezia found Herbert Stommel and Joseph Scheungraber guilty of complicity in murdering civilians, said Stommel’s court-appointed lawyer, Giovanni Battista Santini.

The two, both in their eighties, did not attend the trial and are believed to be in Germany, Santini said.

Prosecutors accused the two former officers of leading their engineering corps unit in a two-day rampage in June 1944 against civilians, including women and elderly residents of Falzano di Cortona, south of Arezzo.

The massacre was a reprisal for the killing of two German soldiers and had its most bloody episode when the troops shut 11 people in a farmhouse and then blew up the building.

Stommel and Scheungraber were also sentenced to pay compensation to the town of Cortona and to the families of the victims.