German man goes on trial for hoarding Nazi-era weaponry
An unidentified 84-year-old allegedly stored an army tank, an anti-aircraft gun, mortar machine guns, assault rifles, fully and semi-automatic pistols, and other Nazi-era military equipment.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFUpdated: MAY 29, 2021 17:38Hitler and Hermann Göring saluting at a 1928 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg(photo credit: PUBLIC DOMAIN / HEINRICH HOFFMANN / US NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION)
An elderly German man went on trial on Friday for allegedly illegally storing a cache of Nazi-era weaponry, according to DPA International.The unidentified 84-year-old allegedly stored an army tank, an anti-aircraft gun, mortar machine guns, assault rifles, fully and semi-automatic pistols, over 1,000 rounds of ammo and a torpedo in the basement of his villa in Kiel, prosecutors said.The armaments were found in the man's house in 2015, during a widespread investigation focused on locating these types of weapon caches.According to the report, it took German security officials about nine hours to move the tank, which weighed around 40 tons, out of man's basement.The defendant's defense is that he bought the tank in England as "scrap metal." Prosecutors are attempting to ascertain if the weapons were operational or not, which is a "key issue" facing the court, the report noted.If the weapons prove to be operational, then prosecutors can state that the man was in clear violation of Germany's War Weapons Control Act, in addition to other offenses, which could land the man in prison for up to five years.The anti-aircraft gun is believed to be the only operational weaponry in the cache, according to the report citing experts summoned by the court.
