Italian Jews protested on Monday outside the lawyer's office at which a 93-year-old Nazi war criminal was starting work following a court ruling that allows him to leave house arrest every day.

About 100 people, some shouting "Murderer!", gathered outside the Rome office where former SS Captain Erich Priebke, jailed for life for the massacre of 335 men and boys at the Ardeatine Caves near Rome during World War Two, was beginning his first day at work.

"It's an absolute disgrace, people forget," Leone Sonnino, an 80-year-old Jewish man, told Reuters Television. "People say 'It's enough now'. Enough for what? Nothing should be enough, there can never be enough grief."

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"The protest will last for as long as we have breath," said another Jewish protester, Roberto Limentani.

Priebke arrived before the protestors on the back of a motor scooter driven by his lawyer, Paolo Giachini.

A military court ruled last week that Priebke, who is serving his sentence under house arrest for health reasons, can work for Giachini, who campaigned for his freedom and in whose Rome flat Priebke lives. The lawyer says Priebke will use his knowledge of German, Spanish, English and French to do translations and clerical work at his office.

Priebke was extradited to Italy in 1995 from Argentina, where he fled after the war and worked for decades as a schoolteacher.

"The law says that after a period in prison inmates have the right to certain benefits, because detention here in Italy isn't just punitive, it tries to re-educate those who have been condemned," Giachini told Reuters outside his office.

But the military tribunal's ruling has been criticized by Italian politicians and by Nazi hunters at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, who said it "insults the family and friends of those murdered by Priebke and his cohorts".

The ruling lets Priebke go to the office "every day, freely" and "go out to satisfy, at nearby places and for the time strictly necessary, the indispensable necessities of life" -- meaning he can pop out for lunch.

The Ardeatine Cave killings were in reprisal for a partisan attack on Germans and many of the victims were taken from Rome's ancient Jewish ghetto. Priebke admitted he participated but said he had obeyed orders on pain of death.