An Italian court of final appeal on Thursday upheld life sentences against three former Nazi officers convicted in the 1944 massacre of 560 Italian civilians in Tuscany, the ANSA news agency reported. The case was reopened to examine whether testimony from soldiers may have been tainted because they were allegedly accomplices in the massacre.
The officer and two lieutenants were convicted in absentia in June 2005 by a military tribunal in the northern city of La Spezia along with seven other Nazis for the massacre in the small Tuscan town of Sant'Anna di Stazzema, near Lucca, a few days after British forces liberated Florence.
Five of the original 10 appealed the convictions, which were upheld in November 2006. They launched a further appeal, but two have since died. The survivors are Gerhard Sommer and George Rauch, born in 1921, and Karl Gropler, born in 1923, according to ANSA.
The SS division they belonged to were retreating from an advance of British and American troops who had landed in Salerno, southern Italy, on September 3, 1943. They were under orders to follow a scorched earth policy. About 1,000 people took refuge in Sant'Anna, a mountain town about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Lucca.