Priebke buried in prison cemetery

Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke has been secretly buried in an unnamed prison cemetery somewhere in Italy, according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. The German, who died in Rome on October 11th at the age of 100, had played an important role in the infamous "Fosse Ardeatine" reprisal killings in Rome in March 1944 in which Nazi forces executed 335 civilians, including Jews, partisan fighters and left-wing activists.

Priebke was buried in secret to avoid a repetition of the public disorder that occurred when the ultra-conservative Lefebvre Catholic community attempted to hold a funeral service for him in Albano, south of Rome. The prison cemetery option was chosen by police because no church community was willing to offer a burial site.

The governments of Germany and Argentina, where Priebke lived undetected for almost 50 years until his arrest in 1995, had declined to bury him. According to La Repubblica', Priebke is buried in a grave marked by a dark wooden cross bearing a number but no name. The cemetery is reportedly fenced off within the prison grounds. All of this is to ensure Priebke's grave does not become a neo-Fascist shrine.