AP: “A former secretary for the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp skipped the start Thursday of her trial in Germany on more than 11,000 counts of accessory to murder. She was picked up several hours later and ordered held in custody. The 96-year-old woman left her home near Hamburg in a taxi on Thursday morning, a few hours before proceedings were due to start at the state court in Itzehoe, court spokeswoman Frederike Milhoffer said. The court issued an arrest warrant and delayed the reading of the indictment until the next scheduled hearing on Oct. 19 because that couldn’t be done in the defendant’s absence.”

“The accused woman previously had ‘announced that she didn’t want to come’ to court, but that did not provide sufficient grounds for detaining her ahead of the trial, Milhoffer said. Given the woman’s age and condition, she had not been expected ‘actively to evade the trial,’ Milhoffer added. Police found the defendant and she was brought to the court on Thursday afternoon. A court statement said that she was being taken to a detention center. Prosecutors argue that the woman was part of the apparatus that helped the Nazi’s Stutthof camp function during World War II more than 75 years ago. The court said in a statement before the trial that the defendant allegedly ‘aided and abetted those in charge of the camp in the systematic killing of those imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945 in her function as a stenographer and typist in the camp commandant’s office.’ Despite her advanced age, the German woman was to be tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes. German media identified her as Irmgard Furchner.”