A 95-year-old former SS guard for the Auschwitz death camp died on Tuesday before he could serve his designated five-year prison sentence. Reinhold Hanning’s lawyer confirmed on Thursday that his client had died at his home in Lage, North Rhine-Westphalia on Tuesday. Hanning was convicted last year for his complicity in the Holocaust, and sentenced to five years in prison. As an SS member and guard at Auschwitz, the court ruled that Hanning had been an accessory to murder in 170,000 cases. The legal basis for prosecuting former Nazis changed in 2011 with Germany's landmark conviction of former death camp guard John Demjanjuk.

Source: The Local June 01, 2017 09:56 UTC