Because of Nazi crimes, the Berlin prosecutor has brought charges against Hans H. The 95-year-old accused of murder in more than 36,000 cases, the agency said.
H. is said to have been a member of the 16th Company of the "SS-Totenkopfsturmbannes" in the concentration camp Mauthausen in the period between summer 1944 and spring 1945. He is said to have guarded inmates according to prosecutors. "Altogether the relatives of the Totenkopfsturmbann, to which the accused counted, in the context of the guard the escape of the prisoners if necessary with lethal armed force should be prevented."
During the time of the crime, at least 36,223 people were reported to have been killed in the Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz in Austria - mostly by gasification, but also by injections and shootings. According to prosecutors H. should have been as well known killing methods and methods as the disastrous living conditions of the inmates. According to the indictment, he wanted to promote or at least facilitate the killings of the camp inmates by the chief perpetrators.
The indictment now, at such a late date, go back to a changed case law of the Federal Court, said the authority. According to this, cases are also prosecuted as aiding and abetting murder, in which the accused can not be shown to personally participate in actual killings - but that they were involved in the organized killing apparatus, for example as members of the guards.