Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, died at the age of 103. He was a champion of international criminal law and secured

convictions of numerous German officers who led death squads during World War II.

Ferencz was just 27 years old when he served as a prosecutor in 1947 at Nuremberg, where he secured guilty verdicts against 22 Nazis. He became chief prosecutor for the United States in the trial of 22 officers who led mobile paramilitary killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen.

The squadscarried out mass killings targeting Jews, gypsies and others during the war in German-occupied Europe and were responsible for more than a million deaths. All the defendants were convicted, and 13 were given death sentences. After the war ended in 1945, Ferencz worked to secure compensation for Holocaust victims and survivors.

He later advocated for the creation of an international criminal court, which came into force in 2002. At age 91, he took part in the first case before the court by delivering a closing statement in the prosecution of accused Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, who was convicted of war crimes. Ferencz was critical of actions by his own country, including during the Vietnam War, and he continued to devote most of his life to preventing war. Photo by Wikimedia commons.