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Prosecutors contend Josef Scheungraber, a one-time infantry commander in the German army, ordered the summary executions of 14 Italian civilians in 1944 after an attack by anti-Nazi partisans had killed two German soldiers, the BBC reported.

In what is expected to be one of the last trials of its kind, the elderly German listened to the proceedings with a hearing aid as his attorney said Scheungraber "completely and thoroughly denies the accusations in the charge sheet."

Scheungraber had earlier been sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by an Italian military court for the World War II incident in a Tuscan village.

The BBC said dozens of demonstrators parading outside the courtroom called for Scheungraber to be put behind bars, with some expressing outrage that the one-time town councilman of Ottobrunn, Germany, was allowed to live as a free man for so long.

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