Lithuanian prosecutors are pushing again to send a former Cleveland real estate agent to prison for persecuting Jews more than 60 years ago.

Authorities are appealing a ruling in the conviction of Algimantas Dailide that spared the 85-year-old man time behind bars. A three-judge panel in March cited Dailide's age as the reason it did not sentence him to prison in Lithuania .

Prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevieius said in a phone interview last week that he wants Dailide to serve five years in prison for his role in arresting Jews during World War II for the Nazi-led security police.

Dailide, who now lives in Germany , is seeking to have the conviction thrown out. He has maintained that he was a simple clerk.

An appellate court in Vilnius , the country's capital, will have a hearing June 8. Valentukevieius said he is not sure when a decision will be made.

"I had hoped it was over," said Anita Looper of Dayton , who is related to Dailide by marriage. "He and his wife are elderly, and they are living in a place that is not their home. I'm disappointed that this has come up again."

Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center , an international Jewish rights organization, has pushed for the appeal.

"If we fail to punish the people who committed the crimes of the Holocaust just because they reach a certain chronological age, then we let them off the hook," Zuroff said. "The passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrator."

Dailide, (pronounced die-LEE-day) left the United States in 2003 for Germany , his wife's homeland, before the government could carry out a court order for his deportation, based on his wartime past.

In 1994, federal attorneys in the Office of Special Investigations accused Dailide of arresting Jewish men, women and children who had tried to escape death by fleeing a barbed-wire ghetto in Vilnius during the war.

U.S. District Judge Paul Matia agreed with prosecutors, saying Dailide assisted in the persecution of Jews. He also ruled that Dailide lied on his visa application when he entered the United States in the 1950s.

His appeals hearing comes a few months after Zuroff's office blasted Lithuanian judges in a report about countries' willingness to prosecute and sentence Nazi war criminals.

The Wiesenthal Center gave Lithuanian judges a failing grade and the country's prosecutors a grade of B. The United States received the highest grade, an A.

Zuroff said Lithuanian authorities lack the political will to bring Nazi perpetrators to justice.

The Plain Dealer, 31.05.06