ROME-- Italy's highest court has upheld a ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and annulled a previous judgment that Germany must compensate Italian victims of Nazi war crimes.

 The UN court in The Hague ruled in February that Italy had "failed to recognise the immunity" granted by international law for the Third Reich's crimes.

 It ordered Rome to annul compensation orders by Italy's courts last year for 12 Italians who were taken prisoner by Nazi forces and deported to Germany for slave labour after Benito Mussolini fell from power and Italy abandoned its former ally in September 1943.

 The first such order was made by the Court of Appeal of Florence, on Feb. 17 2011 in favour of Mr. Luigi Ferrini, who had been arrested in August 1944 and deported to Germany, where he was detained and forced to work in a munitions factory until the end of the war.

 The Supreme Court of Cassation decision marks the first time a ruling from The Hague on this issue has been upheld by Italy.

 On Feb. 7 this year, a few days after the ICJ ruling, Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi announced that Italy would open “a consultation process” with Germany “to resolve the question of the failure to pay compensation for the Italian victims of the Nazi massacres.”

 Terzi then said the ruling “did indeed confirm a principle of international law,” but added that at the same time “the Court’s decision encourages the two countries to examine more closely the route through which certain key facts and categories need to be respected in terms of reparation and above all of remembrance.”

 In November 2008 Italy and Germany agreed to set up a joint commission to probe legal claims linked to the Second World War, as well as the fate of thousands of Italian deportees.

 Foreign minister at the time, Franco Frattini, announced the decision at a commemoration service with his then German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the former Risiera di San Sabba Nazi concentration camp near Trieste.

 A former rice mill, the Risiera di San Sabba camp was the only camp with a crematorium in Italy, which was used from October 1943 until early 1945. More than 3,000 partisans and Jews are thought to have been killed there and an estimated 25,000 were interrogated and tortured.