AN Italian military court yesterday ordered former SS captain Erich Priebke to stand trial for the Nazi massacre of 335 Italian men and boys during the second World War.
Priebke (82), will go into the dock on May 8th the 51st anniversary of the end of the war in Europe to be judged for his role in the killings at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome.
Lawyers at the closed door preliminary hearing said Priebke showed no emotion as the examining judge, Mr Giuseppe Massi, announced the decision to send him for trial for "multiple homicide aggravated by cruelty".
In the massacre in March 1944, the SS ordered the victims brought to the caves in trucks and shot in the head in groups of five as they knelt on piles of corpses.
Priebke has admitted he drew up a list of victims in reprisal for a partisan attack on German soldiers and personally shot two people but argued he should not be held responsible because he was following orders.
A statement issued by a lawyer representing Rome's Jewish community, which lost 75 members at the caves, said they felt "great appreciation and satisfaction" at the decision.
The community is among several groups representing family members of victims attending the trial as civil plaintiffs.
The lawyer, Ms Paola Severino di Benedetto, said Priebke's trial was necessary to confirm the truth of "this barbaric episode" but she predicted a difficult legal battle.
Certainly, the road to reach this confirmation is still very long and will be made extremely difficult by obstacles such as the tracing of evidence after such a long time and the absence of eyewitnesses," she said.
Lawyers said Priebke testified on Wednesday that the massacre was a "legitimate reprisal" for the partisan attack which killed 33, German soldiers.
"The order came directly from the Fuhrer and if it wasn't obeyed immediately, we would have been killed," Priebke was quoted as saying. "It's a terrible thing to think about it now, but at the time there was nothing else to do."
Lawyers said the ruling meant Priebke would continue to be held in a military jail, where he has been imprisoned since his extradition from Argentina. Priebke, who was extradited after a lengthy legal battle, has been detained in the Rome military prison of Forte Boccea since his arrival last November.
His attorneys had asked the judge earlier yesterday to release him into house arrest.
. Italian prosecutors yesterday formally requested that 35 gangsters, including the jailed Mafia "Godfather" Salvatore Riina, stand trial for a spate of bombings that rocked Italy in 1993, judicial sources said.
The attacks in Rome, Milan and Florence killed 10 people and badly damaged a number of cultural sites, including the world famous Uffizi Gallery.
Riina, found guilty in several Mafia cases and jailed for life, his brother in law, Leoluca Bagarella, a leading gangster, Bernardo Provenzano and a wanted Mafia chief, Giovanni Brusca are accused of masterminding the bombings.
One wing of Florence's Uffizi Gallery is still closed to the public following the May 1993 car bomb which severely damaged parts of its priceless Renaissance art collection.