A 93-year-old former SS guard has been found guilty of accessory to the murder of 5,232 people at a Nazi concentration camp in the final days of the second world war.

Bruno Dey, who was 17 when he joined Stutthof concentration camp as a guard, was handed a two-year suspended sentence by a youth court in Hamburg on Thursday morning.

The state prosecutor had requested a three-year suspended sentence, while the defence had demanded acquittal.

“The concentration camp Stutthof and the mass murder that took place inside was only able to take place with your help,” said the judge Anne Meier-Göring in her verdict.

The trial, which started in October, was continued despite the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Court sessions were limited to two two-hour slots a week and the accused sat in a wheelchair inside a plexiglass box. Journalists were only allowed to follow the proceedings via an audio line in a separate room.

Despite his advanced age Dey followed the proceedings “alertly”, Meier-Göring said.

Dey was found to have assisted the murder of 5,232 mostly Jewish prisoners between August 1944 and April 1945 without personally firing a shot.