Munich - A German defence lawyer called Sunday for a German court doctor to check up on an 89-year-old Ukrainian-born man, John Demjanjuk, who is suspected of taking part in horrifying Nazi death camp murders in 1943.

Guenther Maull, who has been appointed as legal-aid defence to Demjanjuk after a warrant was issued last month in Munich for his arrest, said US efforts to expel Demjanjuk were on hold after a US immigration judge had intervened on Friday.

"How long that will be the situation I don't know," said Maull, who stated earlier that Demjanjuk was too ill to travel to Munich to be tried as an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews at Sobibor concentration camp.

Maull said he would apply to the Munich prosecutor on Monday to send a court-appointed doctor to the United States to see Demjanjuk at his home in Ohio. Demjanjuk has lived in the United States since 1952.

Demjanjuk's US lawyer, John Broadley, said his client suffers from pre-leukemia, kidney disease, spinal problems and gout.

German evidence suggests that Demjanjuk, then 23, was a Nazi guard at Sobibor, now part of Poland, from March till the end of September 1943. In 1952 he anglicized his Ukrainian first name Ivan to John and moved to the United States.

Demjanjuk was acquitted in 1993 by the Israeli Supreme Court of charges that he worked at a different death camp, Treblinka, saving him from the death sentence of a lower court.

Washington cannot prosecute him over the allegations, but has been eager to expel the former US car worker. (dpa)