A civil court in East Berlin today sentenced a former SS troop leader to life imprisonment. Herbert Drabant, 61, was accused of participating in the execution of some 4000 people, including many Jews, and Russians, during World War II. The court was told that he was a member of the infamous SS Special Patrol 12 whose task it was to root out and exterminate Jews, Communists and anti-Nazi elements.
In the first was crimes trial in many years in East Berlin, the court dismissed Drabant’s claims that he had to carry out orders and found him guilty of crimes against humanity in Nazi occupied Soviet Union between 1941 and 1943. Many eyewitnesses testified against him. Drabant was arrested in East Germany last year while living a normal life under his own name.
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