Retired auto worker John Demjanjuk was formally charged on Monday with 27,900 counts of acting as an accessory to murder — one for every person who died at Sobibor during the time he is accused of serving as a guard at the Nazi death camp.
The charges by prosecutors at a Munich state court are one of the final steps before an expected autumn trial for the 89-year-old, who has been fighting a variety of Nazi-era charges since 1977.
HEALTH
PHOTO: AP
Demjanjuk and his family have argued that he is in poor health.
Photos taken in April showed him wincing in pain as immigration agents removed him from his home in Seven Hills, Ohio, where he had been living since 1993.
German doctors cleared the way for formal charges this month when they declared that Demjanjuk was fit to stand trial so long as court hearings did not exceed two 90-minute sessions per day.
The state court must now decide whether to accept the charges — usually a formality — and set a date for the trial.
Court spokeswoman Margarete Noetzel it was unlikely to start until the autumn.
‘A FARCE’
The defendant’s son, John Demjanjuk Jr, described the charges as “a farce” in an e-mail to The Associated Press, writing that: “as long as my father remains alive, we will defend his innocence as he has never hurt anyone anywhere.”
Demjanjuk’s lawyer, Guenther Maull, said he had no immediate comment because had not yet seen the charges.
Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, says he was a Red Army soldier who spent the war as a prisoner of war and never hurt anyone.
But prosecutors accuse him of serving as a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.
PHOTO ID
Nazi-era documents obtained by German prosecutors include a photo ID identifying Demjanjuk as a guard at Sobibor and saying he was trained at an SS facility for Nazi guards at Trawniki, Poland.
US and German experts have declared the ID genuine.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of