A 90-year-old former SS guard has lost his appeal in Germany against a conviction for beating and kicking a Jewish inmate to death.
Anton Malloth was sentenced to life in prison last May for the murder at the Theresienstadt fortress in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.
He also was convicted of attempted murder in the shooting of another prisoner who hid a cauliflower under his jacket during forced harvest work in 1943.
In their appeal to Germany's highest criminal court, Malloth's lawyers said he had not been well enough to stand trial and maintained that, under the European Human Rights Convention, he couldn't be tried for crimes so far in the past.
But judges at the Federal Criminal Court ruled medical assessments had left no doubts over Malloth's fitness to stand trial. They also found the Munich court "clearly took account of the difficulties that resulted from the long time that had elapsed since the events" and noted that the key witness had only emerged in 2000.
Presiding Judge Gerhard Schaefer said German law "foresees that, precisely in cases of this kind, there should be no mitigation of the punishment."
Malloth, who followed last year's trial silently in a wheelchair, didn't attend the appeal hearing.
German prosecutors twice closed investigations against Malloth for lack of evidence. But the case was reopened after a Czech witness stepped forward with new accusations, leading to Malloth's arrest at a Munich nursing home in 2000.
The Federal Criminal Court was due to consider an appeal from another former SS officer convicted last year, but the hearing was called off because of the state of health of Julius Viel, 83.
Viel was convicted of murdering seven Jewish prisoners during the Scond World War and sentenced to 12 years in prison. About 20 Nazi war crimes investigations are still pending in Germany.
AP