A court in Wuppertal, Germany, ruled on Wednesday that a 96-year-old former Nazi concentration-camp guard is “unfit to stand trial,” though noted that there is a “high degree of probability” that he is guilty of the crimes.
The man, identified as Harry S., was accused of having “aided and abetted [the] murder [of] several hundred [people]” at the Stutthof camp in Nazi-occupied Poland where roughly 65,000 people died during the Holocaust, court judge and spokesman Christian Lange told CNN.
He was a guard at the camp between June 1944 and May 1945. There is also “strong evidence” that he oversaw the transportation of almost 600 prisoners to the gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Lange said due to the defendant’s inability “to conduct the defense in an understandable and comprehensible manner,” the trial will not take place. The court also said in a statement that there is “a high degree of probability” of his guilt and that he is ordered to pay his own legal fees, the BBC reported.
There have been two cases in Germany recently related to the Stutthof concentration camp.
In July, Bruno Dey, 93, was found guilty of complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 prisoners and given a two-year suspended prison sentence. In February, 95-year-old Irmgard F., a former secretary at Stutthof, was charged with 10,000 counts of accessory to murder.
