Dutch Nazi, 91, charged with murder of Resistance fighter

Siert Bruins, a former member of the Nazi Waffen SS, was charged with the 1944 murder of a Dutch Resistance fighter.

A court in the German town of Hagen is determining if the case can go to trial, according to The Associated Press. Bruins, 91, is a Netherlands native but is living in and is a citizen of Germany.

He is accused of killing Aldert Klaas Dijkema, a Dutch Resistance leader captured and shot to death near the German border with the Netherlands.

Bruins, who was convicted in 1980 and served eight years in prison for the wartime murder of two Dutch Jews, also was sentenced to death in absentia in the Netherlands in 1949.

He volunteered for the Waffen SS in 1941 and later served in the Nazi internal intelligence agency and the Security Police with a unit looking for Resistance fighters and Jews.

Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the AP that the apprehension of Bruins was “wonderful.”

“It again reinforces that it is still possible to bring Nazi war criminals to justice,” Zuroff said.