A 105-year-old former Nazi-era prison camp guard is being investigated over alleged complicity in the mass murder of Allied prisoners of war.

German prosecutors have opened an investigation into the former Wehrmacht soldier over his alleged role at the notorious Stalag 326 VI K Senne camp in western Germany. 

More than 300,000 prisoners passed through the camp, where men endured starvation, disease, beatings, forced labour and appalling sanitary conditions.

Prosecutors say the 105-year-old is suspected of 'complicity in multiple murders through his guard duties in Senne'.

Estimates suggest between 15,000 and 70,000 prisoners died at the camp, around 13 miles south-east of Bielefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Most of the prisoners were captured Soviet troops, although French, Polish, Serbian, Italian and Belgian servicemen were also imprisoned there.

The guards were Wehrmacht soldiers, with most belonging to a territorial security battalion.

US troops finally liberated the camp on April 2, 1945, just weeks before Nazi Germany surrendered and the war in Europe ended.

Now, more than 81 years later, German prosecutors are still pursuing those suspected of involvement in Nazi crimes.

The extraordinary investigation began after Germany's Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg referred the case to prosecutors in Dortmund in February.

A second former Stalag 326 guard had also been investigated but has since died.

Michael Otte, deputy head of the Ludwigsburg authority, confirmed to Bild newspaper: 'The guard of the Senne prisoner-of-war camp whose case is pending with the Dortmund public prosecutor is already 105 years old.'

The man could be among the oldest criminal suspects ever investigated by German prosecutors.

His extreme age does not automatically prevent a prosecution. Murder and complicity in murder have no statute of limitations in Germany, although any trial would depend on whether he was medically fit to face proceedings.

Dortmund prosecutors are separately investigating another former Wehrmacht guard, who was 100 when the investigation into his alleged role at a prisoner-of-war camp in Hemer began.

Germany has continued prosecuting elderly suspects decades after the Holocaust.

In December 2022, 97-year-old former Stutthof concentration camp secretary Irmgard Furchner was convicted of complicity in 10,505 murders and five attempted murders.

She received a two-year suspended juvenile sentence because she had been aged 18 and 19 when the crimes were committed.