The Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office has asked a Vilnius court to find Algimantas Mykolas Dailide guilty of having participated in crimes against Jews in Nazi-occupied Lithuania during the World War II.

Prosecutors want the 85-year-old defendant to be imprisoned for five years, Alvydas Valiukevicius of the Prosecutor General's Office said in his final speech at the court's hearing on Wednesday.

The prosecutor said it was a minimum punishment as the Criminal Code stipulated imprisonment of 5 to 20 years or life imprisonment for treatment of people prohibited by international law.

The minimum punishment is proposed considering the defendant's poor health and old age.

A panel of judges is due to announce a verdict on Monday.

"I am not guilty, please clear me of all charges," Dailide said in his final statement. His lawyer Algimantas Matuiza also asked to acquit him.

The defendant came to the court hearing from Germany , where he has lived since his deportation from the United States .

Dailide is suspected of committing a criminal deed set forth in Article 100 of the Criminal Code, i.e. treatment of people prohibited by international law.

In 1941-1944, Dailide worked for the Vilnius district office of Lithuanian Security Police, a repressive structure controlled by the Nazis.

According to the act of indictment, he participated in November 1941 arrests of Jewish nationals and arrested two Jews who had escaped from Vilnius ghetto.

According to case materials, in 1942 he arrested members of a Polish underground anti-Nazi organization.

In addition to the defendant, the court has also questioned historians.

The case on World War II crimes against Jews was handed over to Vilnius District Court by the Prosecutor General's Office in November last year.

The Prosecutor General's Office has said it collected information proving Dailide's collaboration with the Nazi regime and that he had carried out security police instructions to persecute civilians of Jewish nationality.

The indictment lists 15 persons who were persecuted for ethnic or political reasons and were deprived of freedom due to the criminal deeds incriminated to Dailide.

Dailide was earlier questioned in Vilnius . The suspect was imposed a bail of 10,000 litas (EUR 2,900).

In 2003, the US Immigration Appeals Board decided to deport Dailide upon establishing that he had taken part in the wartime arrest of Jewish men, women and children attempting to escape from forced confinement in Vilnius ghetto.

Dailide, former real estate agent, who was deprived of his US citizenship in 1997, had lived in Florida. In 1950 he arrived in the United States, telling immigration authorities he had worked as a forester during the war.

After his role in the Holocaust came to light, an Ohio court revoked his US citizenship.

In 1996, the Special Investigation Unit of the US Department of Justice achieved that Aleksandras Lileikis, former head of Security Police Vilnius Office, was deprived of US citizenship. Upon arriving in Lithuania, Lileikis went on trial and died in 2000 shortly after he was found unable to attend court hearings due to an illness.

Lileikis' war-time deputy Kazimieras Gimzauskas returned to Lithuania in 1994 and lost his US citizenship two years later. In February 2001, a Vilnius court found him guilty of war crimes but did not impose a punishment after a medical panel found he could not understand or answer for his actions due to his old age and illnesses. Gimzauskas died shortly after the verdict.

Adolfas Milius, who, just like Dailide, participated in arresting civilian Jews, lost his US citizenship in 1998. Milius moved from US to Lithuania and died here in 1999.

Approximately 90 percent of Lithuania 's pre-war Jewish population of 220,000 perished during the Nazi rule in World War II.