Friedrich Engel, 92, was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a court in Turin in 1999 for crimes committed when he was in charge of the notorious SS military corps in the wartime, Nazi-occupied port of Genoa, the Hamburger Abendblatt paper said. Prosecutors in Hamburg told the paper that the last case against Engel in Germany was dropped in 1969. Since then the file on him has gone missing from the city's archive. Under German law Engel cannot be extradited to stand trial for crimes committed in Italy. Hamburg prosecutor Ruediger Bagger said authorities were still investigating Engel and had requested files from Italy.

The court in Turin found Engel guilty of allowing Italian hostages and resistance members who had surrendered to be shot dead. A survivor of one of the massacres, Raimondo Ricci, was quoted by the Hamburg paper as saying: "Engel was regarded as particularly hard-hearted and cruel." Numerous witness accounts and documents are said to back up the case against Engel. Engel, who has lived in a detached house in Lokstedt suburb for 56 years, did not attend the Italian trial. He has refused to comment on his alleged Nazi past.

(dpa)