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‘Guard’ on 27,000 murder charges
Ed Harris13 Jul 2009
German prosecutors today formally charged a retired car plant worker with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp
during the Second World War.
The charges against John Demjanjuk, 89, who was deported from the US in May, were filed at a state court in Munich.
Doctors had this month ruled that Demjanjuk, accused of being a death camp guard, was fit to stand trial so long as court hearings do not exceed two 90-minute sessions per day.
The court must now decide whether to accept the charges — usually a formality — and set a trial date. The trial is unlikely to start before the autumn.
Charges of accessory to murder carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in Germany.
Prosecutors accuse Ukrainian Demjanjuk of serving as a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazioccupied Poland in 1943.
Demjanjuk says he was a Red Army soldier who was a prisoner of war and never hurt anyone.
But Nazi-era documents obtained by US justice authorities and shared with German prosecutors include a photo ID identifying Demjanjuk as a
guard at Sobibor and saying he was trained by the SS. American and German experts have declared the ID genuine.
Demjanjuk was tried in Israel over accusations he was the notorious “Ivan the Terrible” at
the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity but the conviction was overturned by the
Israeli Supreme Court.
His US citizenship was revoked based on Justice Department evidence showing he hid his past as a death camp guard, and in 2005 an immigration judge ruled he could be deported.
