Germany charges accused Nazi guard Demjanjuk

BERLIN (Reuters) - German prosecutors charged suspected death camp guard John Demjanjuk Monday with helping to kill nearly 28,000 Jews in World War Two, setting the stage for what could be Germany's last big Nazi war crimes trial.

"State prosecutors in Munich have today charged the 89-year-old John Demjanjuk as an accessory to murder in a total of 27,900 cases," prosecutors said in a statement.

Nazi hunters welcomed the announcement, which follows years of legal arguments over the wartime activities of Kiev-born Demjanjuk, who denies any role in the Holocaust.

Prosecutors said the long-time Ohio resident, who has been held in a jail in southern Germany since May 12 after he was deported from the United States, would be tried in a Munich court, but did not specify when.

Lawyers for the prosecution and the defense have previously said autumn could be a feasible start date.

The retired car factory worker tops the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of its 10 most-wanted suspected war criminals. It says Demjanjuk pushed men, women and children into gas chambers at the Sobibor death camp in what is today Poland.

"This is a milestone on the way to finally achieving justice," said Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem and a leading Nazi hunter.

"A trial of this sort sends a very important message, that even many years after the crimes were committed, it is still possible to achieve justice."

Demjanjuk has said he was drafted into the Soviet army in 1941, became a German prisoner of war a year later and served at German prison camps until 1944. He emigrated to the United States in 1951 and became a naturalized citizen in 1958.

Medical experts deemed Demjanjuk fit to stand trial despite protestations from his family that he is too frail. They have recommended that the hearings should be restricted to two sessions of 90 minutes per day.

Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said in a statement the trial was a farce and his father was being victimized.

"As long as my father remains alive, we will defend his innocence as he has never hurt anyone anywhere," he said.

Demjanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship after he was accused in the 1970s of being "Ivan the Terrible," a notoriously sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp.

He was extradited to Israel in 1986 and sentenced to death in 1988, but Israel's Supreme Court overturned his conviction when new evidence showed another man was probably "Ivan."

The accused regained his citizenship, but the U.S. Justice Department refilled its case against him in 1999, arguing he had worked for the Nazis as a guard at three other death camps. His citizenship was stripped from him again in 2002.

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Elizabeth Piper)