Demjanjuk trial to last longer than anticipated

Nov 9, 2010, 17:15 GMT

Munich - The trial against suspected Nazi prison guard John Demjanjuk is expected to last longer than anticipated, the presiding judge at the Munich court said on Tuesday.

Additional hearing dates were being scheduled up until March 2011 to process the volume of documentation presented to the court, the judge said. The list of documents runs to ten pages.

These include earlier testimonials by around 100 former Ukrainian Nazi prison guards who have since died. Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk is suspected of having been one such guard.

He is on trial for his alleged role in the murder of 27,900 Jews in the gas chambers at the Sobibor concentration camp, in modern-day Poland, where he is accused of having worked as a prison guard in 1943.

The Munich court also remains to be presented with a 1993 judgement by Israel's Supreme Court, which acquitted Demjanjuk of being the infamous 'Ivan the Terrible' at Treblinka death camp.

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