An 84-year-old Nazi war criminal serving two life sentences for the murder of 18 Jews has died in a British jail, authorities said Monday.

Anthony Sawoniuk, the only person to be convicted of Nazi war crimes in a British court, died in Norwich Prison, in eastern England, on Sunday, a Home Office spokeswoman said.

During a war crimes trial in Britain in 1999 Sawoniuk pleaded innocent to involvement in Nazi genocide in Eastern Europe more than 50 years earlier, but witnesses implicated him in a series of murders.

He was found guilty of two charges of murdering Jews in his hometown of Domachevo in 1942 while serving in the local Nazi-backed police force.

John Nutting, the prosecutor in the Sawoniuk's trial at London's Old Bailey court in 1999, said Sawoniuk was "not only prepared to do the Nazi's bidding, but carried out their genocidal policy with enthusiasm."