A European arrest warrant has been issued for Klaas-Carel Faber, an 88-year-old Dutch war criminal now living in Germany. Mr Faber is one of the most important Nazi era war criminals still at large.

The Dutch authorities, who announced the news on Thursday, want Germany to hand him over so he can serve the rest of his sentence.

This is the first time a European arrest warrant has been issued.

During the Second World War, Klaas-Carel Faber was a member of the firing squad in Westerbork concentration camp, a member of the Armed SS and a member of the death squad Sonderkommando Feldmeijer.

In 1947, he was sentenced to death for killing at least 11 people at Westerbork concentration camp and for assisting the enemy during the war. A year later the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In 1952, Mr Faber escaped from top-security Breda prison and fled to West-Germany.

There have been earlier attempts to get Mr Faber, who as a former member of the SS has obtained German citizenship, handed over to the Netherlands, but these have all failed.