Henry King, Nuremberg prosecutor, dies

CLEVELAND, May 12 (UPI) -- Henry T. King Jr., a Nuremberg prosecutor who was involved in the founding of the International Criminal Court, has died at his home in Cleveland. King was 89.

His son, Dave King, told The New York Times that his father died Saturday of cancer.

Unable to join the military during World War II because of a heart condition, King volunteered to be part of the team prosecuting Nazi war criminals because he was bored with working for a New York law firm. About 200 U.S. lawyers joined the prosecution with King, Whitney Harris and Benjamin Ferencz the last survivors.

King worked in the second phase of the prosecution He was assistant prosecutor at the trial of Erhard Milch, a German officer involved in the mistreatment and killing of slave laborers.

In his later years, King taught at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and served as an adviser to the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, N.Y., founded to honor the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg.

In 1998, King, Ferencz and Harris successfully lobbied the delegates setting up the International Criminal Court to include waging aggressive war among the grounds for prosecution.