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CRIME

Germany charges 100-year-old former Nazi camp guard

A 100-year-old former concentration camp guard has been charged with complicity in 3,518 murders as Germany races to bring surviving Nazi staff to justice, prosecutors told AFP on Monday.

Germany charges 100-year-old former Nazi camp guard
A former watchtower on the grounds of the Sachsenhausen memorial site. Photo: DPA

The man stands accused of “knowingly and willingly” assisting in the murder of prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.

He is considered fit to stand trial despite his age, the public prosecutor's office in the town of Neuruppin confirmed after the story was reported by the NDR broadcaster.

The case comes days after German prosecutors charged a former secretary at a Nazi concentration camp with complicity in the murders of 10,000 people, in the first such case in recent years against a woman.

The 95-year-old accused had worked at the Stutthof camp near what was Danzig, now Gdansk, in then Nazi-occupied Poland.

Germany has been hunting down former Nazi staff since the 2011 conviction of former guard John Demjanjuk on the basis he served as part of the Nazi killing machine set a legal precedent.

Since then, courts have handed down several guilty verdicts on those grounds rather than for murders or atrocities directly linked to the individual accused.

Among those who were brought to late justice were Oskar Gröning, an accountant at Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard at the same camp.

Both were convicted of complicity in mass murder at the age of 94 but died before they could be imprisoned.

In the most recent verdict, a former SS guard, Bruno Dey, was found guilty at the age of 93 and was given a two-year suspended sentence.

A case was brought against another former guard at Stutthof in July over complicity in the murder of several hundred people.

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CRIME

Aide to German far-right MEP arrested on suspicion of spying for China

An aide to a German far-right politician standing in June's European Union elections has been arrested on suspicion of spying for China, German prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Aide to German far-right MEP arrested on suspicion of spying for China

The man, named only as Jian G., stands accused of sharing information about negotiations at European Parliament with a Chinese intelligence service and of spying on Chinese opposition figures in Germany, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

On the website of the European Parliament, Jian Guo is listed as an accredited assistant to MEP Maximilian Krah, the far-right AfD party’s lead candidate in the forthcoming EU-wide elections.

He is a German national who has reportedly worked as an aide to Krah in Brussels since 2019.

The suspect “is an employee of a Chinese secret service”, prosecutors said.

“In January 2024, the accused repeatedly passed on information about negotiations and decisions in the European Parliament to his intelligence service client.

“He also spied on Chinese opposition members in Germany for the intelligence service.”

The suspect was arrested in the eastern German city of Dresden on Monday and his homes were searched, they added.

The accused lives in both Dresden and Brussels, according to broadcasters ARD, RBB and SWR, who broke the news about the arrest.

The AfD said the allegations were “very disturbing”.

“As we have no further information on the case, we must wait for further investigations by federal prosecutors,” party spokesman Michael Pfalzgraf said in a statement.

The case is likely to fuel concern in the West about aggressive Chinese espionage.

It comes after Germany on Monday arrested three German nationals suspected of spying for China by providing access to secret maritime technology.

READ ALSO: Germany arrests three suspected of spying for China

China’s embassy in Berlin “firmly” rejected the allegations, according to Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua.

According to German media, the two cases are not connected.

In Britain on Monday, two men were charged with handing over “articles, notes, documents or information” to China between 2021 and last year.

Police named the men as Christopher Berry, 32, and Christoper Cash, 29, who previously worked at the UK parliament as a researcher.

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