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Accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk, 89 is removed by US immigration agents to an awaiting van from his Seven Hills, Ohio to deport him to Germany where he faces charges in the deaths of 29,000 Jews - Source: Reuters -
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Accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk has been deemed fit
enough by medical experts to stand trial in Germany for helping to
kill 29,000 Jews in World War Two, the state prosecutors office in
Munich said.
Demjanjuk, 89, deported to Germany from the United States, has been
held in a jail near Munich since May 12.
His trial is expected to be Germany's final major Nazi war
crimes court case.
After examining Demjanjuk, medical experts placed only one
condition on their stamp of approval for the trial to proceed -
that court appearances be limited to two 90-minute sessions a day,
the state prosecutors office said in a statement.
They said they expect charges to be raised against Demjanjuk in
July.
Both prosecutors in Munich and Demjanjuk's defence attorney,
Guenther Maull, said the trial could begin by autumn.
"The doctors have determined that the accused is capable of
standing trial with the condition that the length of the court
sessions should not exceed two 90-minute sessions per day," the
state prosecutors said.
Demjanjuk's family has fought efforts to put him on trial, arguing
that he is too frail.
They said he suffers from spinal problems, kidney failure and
anaemia.
When he arrived in Germany, pictures showed Demjanjuk lying on a
stretcher in an ambulance wearing a baseball cap with tubes coming
out of his nose.
He has been held at Stadelheim jail, where Hitler was held after
a failed 1922 coup attempt.
Born in Ukraine, Demjanjuk tops the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list
of its 10 most-wanted suspected war criminals. Munich prosecutors
want him tried for assisting in murders at Sobibor extermination
camp, in what is now Poland.
He denies any role in the Holocaust.
The Wiesenthal Center says Demjanjuk pushed men, women and children
into gas chambers.
Demjanjuk has said he was drafted into the Soviet army in 1941,
became a German prisoner of war and later became a guard in German
prison camps until 1944.
He was stripped of his US citizenship after he was accused in the
1970s of being Ivan the Terrible, a notoriously sadistic guard at
the Treblinka death camp.
He was extradited to Israel in 1986 and sentenced to death in 1988,
but Israel's Supreme Court overturned his conviction when new
evidence showed another man was probably Ivan.
He regained his citizenship in 1998, but the US Justice Department
refiled its case against him in 1999, arguing he had worked for the
Nazis as a guard at three other death camps.
His citizenship was stripped from him again in 2002.
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