ROME Friedrich Engel, nicknamed in Italy the "executioner of Genoa" for war crimes committed in 1944-45, said on Tuesday in the Italian press he had only been obeying orders and wanted to be forgotten.

According to AFP a Turin court gave the German former SS officer a life-sentence in his absence in 1999 for war crimes. The Italian justice system holds him responsible for the death of more than 100 partisans and civilians in northern Italy and a massacre of 59 political prisoners in 1944.

Engel, now 92, told the Rome daily ********** La Repubblica ********* he had only taken part in a "10 for one" reprisal killing ordered by Adolf Hitler for attacks by Italian guerrillas which killed six German soldiers. He said he had had no role in other reprisal killings.

"This story belongs in the past. After all these years it makes no sense to dig it up," he told the Turin daily *********** La Stampa ********.

"For all these years I have always worked and tried it be a good citizen. It was a war," he said.

He caused an outcry recently when Italian television broadcast a German television report showing him leading a quiet retirement in the German city of Hamburg.

Italy has asked Germany to arrest and extradite Engel.

"We always have to pursue war criminals," Justice Minister Piero Fassino said on Tuesday.

"A person who has been responsible for such serious war crimes cannot go unpunished," he said.

As German legislation has no provisions for the extradition of German citizens, Fassino said Italy wanted Germany to try him.