German veteran, 90, jailed for life for Nazi war crimes committed during World War II

Josef Scheungraber was sentenced to life in prison for 10 counts of murder and one of attempted murder over the June 1944 killings in Falzano di Cortona, near the Tuscan town of Arezzo.

As a 25-year-old Wehrmacht lieutenant, Scheungraber ordered his soldiers to shoot three Italian men and a 74-year-old woman in the street. He ordered another 11 civilians to be herded into a barn that was blown up as punishment for an attack by Italian partisans which killed two German soldiers, the Munich state court ruled.

In 2006 Scheungraber was convicted of the same crimes by an Italian military court and sentenced in absentia to life in prison, but has served no time.

Scheungraber, who was in command of a company of engineers at the time, denied the charges. He maintains he was not in Falzano di Cortona when the killings happened, but was in charge of overseeing reconstruction of a nearby bridge.