The District High Court in The Hague today upheld a lower court’s ruling against an appeal by Nazi war criminal Joseph Kotaella to have his life sentence suspended on humanitarian grounds. Kotaella, 67, is partially paralyzed, He is the only one of three German war criminals still imprisoned in Holland.
The High Court ruled that the continuation of Kotaella’s sentence cannot be considered inhumane punishment under the terms of the European Declaration of Human Rights, as claimed by the prisoner’s attorney. Kotaella was sentenced to death by a Dutch court in 1948 for crimes he committed personally while sub commander of a concentration camp near Amersfoort during the Nazi occupation of Holland in World War II. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1951.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
