Former Nazi camp secretary, 96, caught after skipping trial

The empty seat where the defendant was due to sit at the court in Itzehoe (Markus Schreiber, Pool/AP)

A former secretary of an SS commander in charge of a concentration camp who skipped the planned start of her trial in Germany on more than 11,000 counts of accessory to murder has been found after the court issued a warrant for her arrest.

The 96-year-old woman had left her home near Hamburg in a taxi on Thursday morning, a few hours before proceedings were due to start at the state court in Itzehoe, court spokesperson Frederike Milhoffer said.