Munich court issues Demjanjuk arrest warrant

Berlin - A Munich court on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant John Demjanjuk, 88, who is accused of being the brutal Ivan the Terrible guard at a Nazi death camp.

German prosecutors claim that between March and the end of September 1943 Demjanjuk was a guard presiding over the murder of a minimum of 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor camp, which today is in 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, where he at present resides.

However, he was stripped of his US citizenship in 2008. An identity card indicating Demjanjuk was in the SS paramilitary group which ran concentration camps was the key to his conviction by an Israeli court in 1988.

But the Israeli Supreme Court freed him in 1993 over concern that the certificate might have been a Soviet forgery.

The certificate contains Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk's photograph, an SS service number and notes of his service at two Nazi sites.

Demjanjuk lived in Germany as a refugee before being resettled in the United States in 1952. (dpa)

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