VERONA, Italy -- A court convicted two self-styled Nazi extremists of murdering two monks, a priest and two alleged drug addicts who the killers considered to be 'the dregs of humanity,' officials said Wednesday.
Wolfgang Abel, 26, a West German who grew up in Verona, and Marco Furlan, 25, also were found guilty late Tuesday of setting fires at a pornographic movie theater in Milan and a popular discotheque in Munich, West Germany, in 1983.
It was not immediately known why the defendants were tried in Italy for the West Germany arson fire.
Each of the defendants was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the crimes. They escaped maximum life terms because the court accepted a medical report that the two are 'mentally semi-invalid.' Both men were ordered to undergo three years of psychiatric therapy after completing their sentences.
The Verona court acquitted the pair of 10 other slayings. Defense lawyers announced they will appeal the guilty verdicts.
During the two-month trial, Abel and Furlan were accused of 15 murders between 1977 and 1984.
Both were found guilty of the murder of two monks from a Vicenza convent, who were bludgeoned to death with hammers on a country road in July 1982, and a priest killed with a hammer at Trento, in the Italian Alps, in February 1983.
Furlan was convicted of killing a man by setting fire to the car in which he was sleeping in Verona in August 1977, and Abel was found guilty of clubbing and knifing to death a bartender in Venice in December 1979.
In leaflets left at the scene of the crime, the defendants called the victims 'the dregs of humanity.'
The killers accused the two monks of being voyeurs, apparently for spying on couples engaged in sexual activity. The leaflets accused the man who burned to death of being a drug addict and the bartender of being a drug addict and a homosexual. The motive for killing the priest was not determined.
The leaflets bore Nazi insignia and the German slogan 'Gott mit uns,' or 'God is with us,' and claimed the slayings were carried out by an organization called Ludwig.
'We are the last of the Nazis -- our faith is Nazism,' one leaflet stated. 'Death will come to those who betray the true God.'
Ludwig remained a mystery for almost seven years until the two men were arrested in March 1984 as they were attempting to set fire to a discotheque at Castiglione delle Stiviere, near Mantua in northern Italy. The nightclub was packed with 350 people at the time.
There have been unconfirmed reports that a third person was involved in Ludwig.
Abel, the son of a schoolteacher, and Furlan, the son of a plastic surgeon, refused to answer police questions and did not testify in court. Both exercised their option under Italian law to stay away from the court through most of the trial, including the final session.
