Italians and Jewish groups reacted with anger on Wednesday to a court ruling that a 93-year-old Nazi war criminal can leave house arrest every day to work.

An Italian military court allowed former Nazi officer Erich Priebke who was convicted for his role in a 1944 massacre to leave house arrest to work.

Since last month, the 93-year-old has been allowed to leave the Rome apartment where he is serving a life sentence to work at his lawyer's studio in the Italian capital Priebke's lawyer, Paolo Giachini, said Monday.

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Priebke has been in prison or house arrest since he was extradited to Italy in 1994 from Argentina. He was convicted of war crimes three years later for his role in the massacre of 335 civilians at the Ardeatine Caves on the outskirts of Rome.

Priebke has admitted shooting two people and helping round up the victims, but has always insisted he was just following orders and should not be held responsible.

Giachini said Priebke was working as a translator thanks to his knowledge of German, Italian, Spanish and English. Speaking from his studio, the lawyer told reporters by telephone that his client only came to the office when necessary and declined to say whether Priebke was there Monday.

Giachini maintained the judges could not refuse this request because Italian law affords such benefits to all convicts after 10 years in jail if they have been on good behavior, but news of the ruling created a storm because of the heinous nature of the crime.

Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni expressed solidarity with angered families of those killed in the massacre and Massimo Rendina, the head of a group of former Italian resistance fighters in World War II, told the Corriere della Sera daily that his association and the relatives were considering appealing against the ruling.

Nazi hunters at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said the ruling "insults the family and friends of those murdered by Priebke and his cohorts" and was "based on a totally false assumption that, as an elderly person, Priebke deserves a measure of sympathy".

The president of Rome's ancient Jewish community, Leone Paserman, questioned why military courts believed Priebke was too old to be kept in a prison, but not too old to work.

"They should abolish life sentences if not even those who have committed crimes against humanity have to serve them," he said.

Politicians from the ruling centre-left alliance called for the city of Rome to stage a protest.

"Priebke being free is an offence to memory, to the city of Rome ... and to the Italian Jewish community who have our full solidarity," said Pino Sgobio, a communist lawmaker.

The executions at the caves occurred March 24, 1944, 24 hours after a partisan attack in central Rome that killed 33 members of a Nazi military police unit.

Nazi forces decided to kill 10 Italians for every slain German, raiding
prisons for dozens of political prisoners, taking 75 Jews, and adding common criminals and residents from near the site of the partisan attack.

They rounded up five more men than the 330 they sought and killed them all in the abandoned quarry outside Rome.

"A man of 93 who gets a job at a law firm? It's absurd, it's a way to get
around his sentence," Amos Luzzatto, a former head of Italy's Jewish
communities, told Corriere.

"I hope that Priebke will not take advantage of this to organize an escape."