Dutch war criminal confirmed dead in Germany

German police confirm that the Dutch war criminal Herbertus Bikker has died in Germany at the age of 93.

The Dutch war criminal Herbertus Bikker has died in Germany at the age of 93. Police in Germany have confirmed a report in the Dutch freesheet DePers that he died of natural causes in early November last year at his home in Haspe in the Ruhr region. He is buried in the local cemetery.

Bikker was one of four remaining convicted war criminals from the Netherlands still at large. He was known as the 'Butcher of Ommen' for his brutal treatment of inmates in the Erika prison camp in the Dutch province of Overijssel. He also served in an elite SS regiment on the Eastern Front and took part in nazi raids in the Netherlands.

After the war, Bikker was sentenced to death for the murder of the resistance fighter Jan Houtman in November 1944. This was commuted to lifelong imprisonment without parole, but in 1952 he Bikker managed to escape from jail in Breda.

Together with six other war criminals he fled to Germany. There he was naturalised under the a law which automatically grants German citizenship to foreigners who have served in the German armed forces. As a result he and could not be extradited to the Netherlands.

A new trial for the Houtman murder was abandoned in February 2004 after Bikker was judged mentally incapable of understanding what was happening.

Three other convicted Dutch World War 2 criminals are still alive and assumed to be living in Germany: Sierd Bruins (88) in Altenbreckerfeld, Heinrich Boere (87) in Eschweiler and Klaas-Carel Faber (87) in Ingolstadt.