London, July 21 (IANS) The remains of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess in a German graveyard will be destroyed to prevent neo-Nazis from converting the area into a pilgrimage site, BBC reported Thursday.


Hess's bones were exhumed at the graveyard in the southern German town of Wunsiedel early Wednesday.

The remains will be cremated and then scattered at sea, the BBC said. Hess was captured after flying to Britain in 1941 and sentenced to life in prison. He killed himself in a Berlin jail in 1987 at the age of 93.

As he requested in his will, he was buried in the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where his family had a holiday home and where his parents were already interred.

The local Lutheran church which supervises the cemetery gave its permission for the burial at the time, ruling that the wishes of the deceased could not be ignored, the broadcaster said quoting the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

But they and local people have since become concerned by the number of far-right groups visiting the grave. Each year on the anniversary of his death, neo-Nazis have attempted to stage a march to the cemetery, saluting the grave with its epitaph "I dared", and laying floral wreaths, the report said.

Hess was one of Hitler's closest aides, but in 1941 he parachuted into Scotland in an apparently unauthorised solo peace mission, which was denounced by the fuhrer.

He was imprisoned by the British for the duration of the war, and jailed for life at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. He spent 40 years in Spandau Prison in Berlin, according to the BBC. He was found hanged at the prison in August 1987.