The 10-year prison sentence imposed on Nazi war criminal Pieter Menten was upheld by The Hague Supreme Court yesterday, ending a 4 1/2 year legal struggle to bring the millionaire Dutch art dealer to justice for his murder of Jews and others while a member of the Nazi SS.
Menten, 81, was convicted by a special tribunal in Rotterdam last June for war crimes committed in the Polish village of Podhorodze in July, 1941. In addition to the prison term, he was fined 100,000 Guilders. It was his second conviction on the charge of mass murder. In December, 1977 an Amsterdam court sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment. But the Supreme Court quashed that verdict on technicalities and referred the case to The Hague district court. When the latter upheld the earlier sentence, the Supreme Court again overturned it and sent the case to the Rotterdam court which convicted him anew.
But Menten lost his final appeal yesterday. He is presently confined to a hospital under police guard while undergoing treatment for diabetes and arteriosclerosis.
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