Washington  - The United States late Wednesday said it would continue to lend support to Germany as it prosecutes the long out- standing war crimes case of John Demjanjuk, who is accused of being the brutal Ivan the Terrible guard at a Nazi death camp.

A Munich court earlier Wednesday issued an arrest warrant for Demjanjuk, who two decades ago was sentenced to death in Israel only to be freed by a court which doubted the veracity of some of the evidence.

Demjanjuk returned to live in the US, where he still resides.

"The US government, through the Department of Justice and State, has been in close close contact with our German counterparts on this matter and we will continue to offer our support and assistance," said Laura Sweeney, spokesperson for the US Department of Justice, in an e-mailed statement.

German prosecutors charged that between March and the end of September 1943, the 88-year-old retired US car worker was a guard implicated as an accessory to the murder of at least minimum of 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor camp, which is in present-day Poland.

Wednesday's move by the Munich court could represent the first steps in paving the way for the extradition of Demjanjuk from the United States, which has already stripped him of his US citizenship. dpa