Anthony Sawoniuk, the only Nazi war criminal to have been convicted after a full trial in a British court, has died in prison. He was 84.

Sawoniuk was given two life sentences six years ago after being convicted of murdering two Jews near his home town of Domachevo in western Belarus in 1942.

The Home Office today announced that he had died from natural causes in Norwich Prison.

Sawoniuk moved to Britain in 1946. He lived in Bermondsey, south London, and worked until retirement as a ticket inspector for British Rail.

His Nazi past was finally unmasked in the 1990s when files implicating him in genocide were passed to British prosecutors from the Kremlin. A letter he sent to his brother in Belarus had been intercepted by the KGB in 1951. It was handed over in the spirit of co-operation which followed the collapse of Communism.

In 1999, he was convicted on two specimen charges of murder. The Old Bailey was told how he led "search-and-kill" police squads hunting Jews who escaped a Yom Kippur massacre in Domachevo.

The eight-week trial set a number of precedents. Sawoniuk, although frail, blind in one eye and hard of hearing, conducted his own defence. The jury was also taken to the scene of the murders where it heard harrowing evidence from surviving witnesses.

One man said he was forced to watch Sawoniuk command three Jews - two men and a woman - to strip beside an open grave. He then shot them in the head and pushed their bodies into the grave with his knee.

The trial also heard how he ordered 15 Jewish women to strip and face an open grave before killing them with a machine gun. When he realised the Nazis faced defeat, he switched sides to join the Polish army fighting with the Allies.

He arrived in England as a Polish patriot and lived in anonymity, marrying several times and fathering one son.

Sawoniuk denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that he was the victim of a conspiracy.

"I killed no one. I would not dream of doing it. I am not a monster - I am an ordinary working class poor man," he said.

"I have nothing to hide. My conscience is clear and when I am dead, I am going to heaven. That is what I know."

Sawoniuk was transferred to Norwich Prison in February and was being held in a unit for elderly prisoners serving life sentences.

A Home Office spokesman said today: "We can confirm that Anthony Sawoniuk died in Norwich Prison on Sunday."

The Norfolk Police spokeswoman said: "Officers attended the prison yesterday. The death is not being treated as suspicious and the normal coroner’s investigation will now take place."

The Home Office spokesman said that, as far as he was aware, the body would be released to the family of the dead man as normal and no special arrangements would be made for a funeral.

The police spokeswoman said she expected a post-mortem examination to take place and to be followed by an inquest, as is normal routine with inmates who die in prison.

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