Munich - Doctors are expected to give their verdict this week on whether accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk is healthy enough to stand trial, prosecutors said Monday. "We are going on the assumption that he is at least partially fit to go on trial," Chief Prosecutor Anton Winkler said in Munich where the 89-year-old has been in detention since May.

Ukraine-born Demjanjuk, accused of herding Jews to the gas chambers at a Nazi extermination camp in 1943, was delivered to Germany by US federal agents on May 12.

He is expected to face accessory-to-murders charges that he worked at Sobibor death camp in Poland as a guard employed by the SS, during 1943 in a period where 29,000 Jews were killed.

"We have, of course, prepared most of the indictment. But we are awaiting the medical assessment and a possible reaction from the defence," Winkler said.

The Munich High Court is currently studying a complaint lodged by Demjanjuk's defence team against his detention. The complaint was dismissed by a lower court.

The accused lived in Germany from 1945 to 1952 using his Ukrainian name Ivan Demjanjuk, then emigrated to the United States and converted his first name to its English equivalent, John.

Demjanjuk, who was stripped of his US nationality, fought a decades-long court battle to avoid being removed from the United States. His expulsion was delayed by a series of legal challenges citing his health and his advanced age.

Demjanjuk was acquitted in 1993 by the Israeli Supreme Court of charges that he worked at a different death camp, Treblinka, saving him from the death sentence of a lower court in Israel.

A trial of Demjanjuk in Germany is likely to be the last major war-crimes case from the World War II.

earthtimes.org