Algimantas Dailide, 85, worked for the Saugumas, the Lithuania security police, in 1941, when he helped make arrests of civilian Jews near Vilnius in Nazi-occu- pied Lithuania , according to the charges.

The verdict followed a three-day trial that ended Wednesday in Vilnius.

Dailide denied the charges, saying he was a simple clerk. He is the second man convicted in Lithuania for his role in persecuting Jews. Kazys Gimzauskas was convicted in 2001 but never spent time in jail, also because of poor health.

Reaction to Dailide's verdict was swift.

"I'm so happy that he can live the rest of his life in peace," said Anita Looper of Dayton , who is related to Dailide by marriage. "His wife is 90, and he takes care of her. This has been very hard on her."

Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center , an international Jewish rights organization, seethed at the verdict.

"This is the ultimate proof that Lithuania is the safest haven for Nazi war criminals," Zuroff said. "Even when they are convicted, they're set free. This is absolutely ludicrous."

Zuroff said he will push Germany and Poland to charge Dailide with war crimes, as he wants Dailide to serve time in prison for his crimes.

Joseph McGinness, Dailide's attorney in Cleveland , said the allegations should end, as Dailide has been punished for years for something he never did.

"Convicting an innocent office clerk in a political circus demeans the magnitude of Nazi crimes," McGinness said.

The verdict in Vilnius ended a case that began in Cleveland in 1994, when the U.S. Justice Department charged Dailide with lying about his wartime past when he sought citizenship here in the 1950s.

Federal attorneys in the Office of Special Investigations accused Dailide of being far more than an office clerk. They said he took part in arresting Jewish men, women and children who had tried to escape death by fleeing a barbed wire-enclosed ghetto in Vilnius .

At one point, he carried a pistol and went on patrols, U.S. prosecutors alleged.

U.S. District Judge Paul Matia agreed with the government and stripped Dailide of his citizenship in 1997, and appellate judges upheld the decision. In 2003, he left the United States for Germany , his wife's homeland, just before the government deported him.

In Lithuania , Prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevieius said in a phone interview Monday that he wanted the judges to put Dailide in prison for five years. He said he respects the decision but will examine whether to appeal it.

Lithuanian judges did not specify Dailide's health issues.

Jacob Hennenberg, a member of the Kol Israel Foundation of Cleveland, a group of Holocaust survivors, said he does not believe that justice was served by the verdict.

"It took them 60 years to convict one man," Hennenberg said. "He didn't do it all by himself. He may have been there, but he had a lot of help. A lot of help."