A former SS soldier who escaped punishment for his involvement in a wartime massacre is facing a new investigation for hate speech.
Karl Munter, 96, was serving in an SS division on April 1, 1944, responsible for dragging 86 men and boys from the French village of Ascq to railway tracks and shooting them dead in revenge for a resistance attack on a train.
In a TV interview Munter said: "If I arrest men, I have responsibility for them, and if they run away, I have the right to shoot them."
Munter, who has become an icon for German neo-Nazi groups, also denied the Holocaust took place and is now being investigated under hate speech laws.
He was sentenced to death in absentia by a French court in 1949 but was never punished as he was living in Germany where the constitution forbids the extradition of its citizens.
