Killer Nazi prison guard jailed

Anton Malloth beat a Jewish prisoner to death

A court in Germany has sentenced an 89-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard to life in prison.

Malloth was one of the camp's most brutal guards

Anton Malloth was convicted of beating and kicking a Jewish prisoner to death at the Theresienstadt prison camp in Czechoslovakia in 1944.

He was also convicted of attempted murder for shooting a prisoner who hid a cauliflower under his jacket during forced labour a year earlier.

Malloth denied all the charges and showed no emotion as the verdict was read.

'Master over life and death'

Witnesses at the trial said Malloth was one of the most brutal guards at the camp.

One said he hit the prisoner over the head with a stick 20 times and then kicked him in the chest and head until he died.

Prosecutors said he was motivated by racial hatred and "arbitrarily made himself master over life and death".

They said he should be given a life sentence out of respect for his victims and as a warning to today's neo-Nazis.

Sentenced to death

The case had been dropped twice before in Germany for lack of evidence, but went ahead after a Czech witness came forward to testify.

Prosecutors said the sentence was a warning to neo-Nazis

Malloth was sentenced to death in absentia by a Czechoslovak court in 1948.

Malloth, who was Austrian born but took Italian citizenship after World War I, became a German in 1939 so that he could join the Nazi paramilitary, the SS.

After the war he fled to Italy, but his citizenship was revoked in 1956 after the Italian authorities discovered he had lied about his past.

He was finally deported to Germany in 1988.