THE GERMAN state prosecutor in Munich has charged alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk with 27,900 counts of complicity to murder in a 1943 wartime massacre.
The 89-year-old Ukranian-born man, accused of being a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi- occupied Poland, was deported to Germany from the US in May.
Mr Demjanjuk denies the charges and says he is the victim of mistaken identity. Yesterday’s indictment is the latest instalment in a five-year legal battle to bring Mr Demjanjuk to trial.
German doctors have rejected claims of poor health by Mr Demjanjuk’s relatives and said that he is fit to stand trial as long as testimony is limited to three hours a day.
Munich authorities have yet to set a date for what is already being billed as one of the last big Nazi trials.
The main evidence in the trial will be an SS identity document with the number 1393 containing what prosecutors say is a photo of Mr Demjanjuk, a document showing that he was moved to Sobibor camp in March 1943, and witness testimony placing him in the camp.
Mr Demjanjuk denies ever being at the Sobibor camp and claims he joined the SS under duress.
He emigrated to the US after the second World War, working as a mechanic in Ohio and attaining US citizenship in 1958. It was revoked in 1981 and, five years later, he went on trial in Israel accused of being the notorious “Ivan the Terrible” at the Treblinka death camp.
He was found guilty and sentenced to death but, after five years on death row, Israel’s highest court overturned the verdict in 1993 saying it was unlikely he was the notorious guard.
He regained US citizenship in 1998 only to have it stripped a second time in 2002. The extradition battle to Germany began in 2005 and ended in the US supreme court earlier this year.
Since arriving on a chartered plane in May, Mr Demjanjuk has been held in Stadelheim maximum security prison in Munich.
Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff welcomed news of yesterday’s indictment against Mr Demjanjuk, who topped the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s list of most wanted alleged Nazi war criminals.
“We hope for an expedited trial so that justice can be done and he can be given the appropriate punishment,” he said.