A 96-year-old Dutch woman has confessed to killing a man in 1946, believing mistakenly that he had collaborated with the Nazis.

The mayor of the city of Leiden says the woman admitted shooting Felix Gulje in the chest in the doorway to his home because she believed he was working with the German occupiers. He identified the woman as Atie Ridder-Visser, who was in the Dutch resistance during the World War Two occupation of the Netherlands.

Her confession solves a 65-year old murder mystery.

Mayor Henri Lenferink said Gulje was a respectable Leiden citizen and that he in fact had sheltered some Jews and helped others financially.

But in a statement posted on the Internet, Lenferink said Ridder-Visser cannot be prosecuted after so many years, but that the murder must be strongly condemned.

He described it as an unacceptable case of vigilantism.