GERMANY: COURT OVERTURNS NAZI VERDICT ON REICHSTAG ARSONIST

Germany's federal prosecutor overturned the guilty verdict passed on Marinus van der Lubbe, the communist activist who was claimed to have set fire to the Reichstag in 1933 to protest the Nazis' rising power. Van der Lubbe, a Dutchman active in Germany's communist underground, was found guilty of treason and arson by the Reichsgericht, Germany's highest court at the time, and sentenced to death in December 1933. A month later, he was guillotined in a Leipzig prison yard, three days before his 25th birthday. Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag to incite fear about the threat of communism and persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to sign a decree curtailing civil liberties. The acquittals of four other men tried alongside Van der Lubbe in 1933 remain in force, the prosecutor said.