The remains of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess have been exhumed from a grave in Germany after it became a pilgrimage for right-wing extremists.
A church official says the tomb was razed and its headstone removed after consulting with Hess's family.
His bones were exhumed at the graveyard in the town of Wunsiedel, southern Germany, early on Wednesday. The remains were cremated and scattered at sea.
Hess was sentenced to life in prison at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He committed suicide in prison in Berlin in in 1987.
The BBC reports his grave bore the epitaph ''I dared''.
Hess was one of Hitler's closest aides. But in 1941 he made a solo flight to Scotland, where his plane crash-landed, in an apparently unauthorised peace mission which was denounced by the Fuhrer. He was imprisoned by the British for the duration of the war.
At the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, Hess was cleared of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but convicted of crimes against peace and jailed for life.
He spent 40 years in Spandau Prison in Berlin. He was the last remaining inmate at the prison when he was found hanged there in August 1987.
