Demjanjuk pronounced fit for war-crimes trial (Roundup)

Jul 3, 2009, 16:29 GMT

   Munich - Doctors believe John Demjanjuk, 89, is physically and mentally able to stand trial for his alleged role in killing 29,000 Jews at a Nazi concentration camp, German prosecutors said Friday.

But he would not be able to stand more than two daily sessions of 90 minutes each before a trial court, said a medical report. Official doctors have been closely examining him for weeks.

   Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, a US resident for five decades, was expelled to Germany in May to face accessory-to-murder charges after US judges rejected claims that he was too frail to even travel.

He is staying in the sick bay of a Munich prison. Prosecutors say they aim to indict Demjanjuk next month. 

   They say a Nazi personnel record shows that he worked in 1943 as an auxiliary guard at Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland, at the time Jews were being taken there and killed in gas chambers.

   Israel's supreme court found Demjanjuk not guilty in 1993 of murders at a different Nazi camp, Treblinka, concluding it was not proven that he was the same person as a brutal Ukrainian guard nicknamed Ivan the Terrible.

In Jerusalem, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre welcomed the finding. The centre director, Efraim Zuroff, said it was important to hand 'an appropriate punishment to someone who actively participated in the Final Solution.

'It's a very complicated case, but it is good that it is going to be examined in court.'

The centre recently ranked Demjanjuk at the top of its list of Ten Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals.

Demjanjuk has always rejected the allegations, and his German lawyer, Guenther Maull, has said his client would not comment on the charges before he was indicted.