(ANSA-AFP) - ITZEHOE, SEP 30 - A 96-year-old former Nazi death camp secretary failed to turn up for the start of her trial in Germany on Thursday, the judge said, issuing an arrest warrant for the "fugitive" at the dramatic start of the hearing.

One of the first women to be prosecuted for Nazi-era crimes in decades, Irmgard Furchner is charged with complicity in the murders of more than 10,000 people at the Stutthof concentration camp in occupied Poland. She left her retirement home on Thursday morning and took a taxi to a subway station, said Frederike Milhoffer, a spokeswoman for the court. But she failed to turn up at the trial. The presiding judge requested "a little patience" as the planned start of the trial on Thursday seemed in doubt. The defendant's lawyer, Wolf Molkentin, was present in the court room but did not make a statement to journalists. The planned opening of the trial in Itzehoe came one day before the 75th anniversary of the sentencing of 12 senior members of the Nazi establishment to death by hanging at the first Nuremberg trial. (ANSA-AFP).