MUNICH (AFP)---Former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk, accused of herding 29,000 Jews to the gas chambers, is fit to be tried in what could be Germany's last major Nazi case, prosecutors said Friday.
The Ukrainian-born 89-year-old, who was deported from the United States in May, "is fit to stand trial with the restriction that trial days do not last longer than two sessions of 90 minutes," said Margarete Noetzel, a spokeswoman for the state prosecutor's office, citing a medical report.
The case will be transmitted to the court in July, Noetzel added, but it was unclear when any trial would start.
"It is not yet possible to say when a trial would begin. Any speculation would just be like reading tea leaves," she said.
Noetzel added: "The prosecution's charges must be admitted by the court. Then the defence could present objections. It is going to last a while."
Demjanjuk, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's number one suspect among those known to be alive, is wanted for complicity in the deaths of thousands of Jews during his time at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.
Reacting to the decision, the head of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Ephraim Zuroff, told AFP: "We are very pleased that this trial can take place and we hope that it will start as quickly as possible so that this criminal can be judged and receive the punishment he deserves.
"We are convinced that Demjanjuk took part in the final solution," added Zuroff, referring to the Nazi genocide of around six million Jews.
The centre's latest report on wanted Nazi war criminals places Demjanjuk in third position behind two others thought to be dead.
It is not the first time the barrel-chested, bespectacled Demjanjuk has found himself facing judgement. He spent five years on death row in Israel before being acquitted in 1993 when the Jewish state overturned the verdict.
In that case, Demjanjuk was suspected of being "Ivan the Terrible," a particularly brutal death camp guard who specialised in hacking at naked prisoners with a sword, but Israel established it had the wrong man.
According to Demjanjuk's lawyer, his client says he was never there.
He was a guard at Sobibor
But courts in both Israel and the United States have previously stated he was a guard at Sobibor, accusations he had never previously challenged.
Prosecutors also have an SS identity card with a photograph of a young man said to be Demjanjuk and written transcripts of witness testimony placing him at the camp.
Demjanjuk is stateless, having been stripped of his US citizenship for lying about his past. Munich prosecutors say it falls on the German city to try him because he had been registered as living there after World War II.
Question marks over the health of the octogenarian -- whose family say he suffers from a variety of ailments including kidney disease, arthritis and cancer -- dominated the months of legal wrangling that preceded his eventual deportation to Germany from his home in Cleveland, Ohio.
Lawyers for Demjanjuk argued that the pain he would suffer on the transatlantic flight to Germany amounted to a form of torture and that he would likely not survive the flight.
However, the United State Justice Department rejected the family's arguments and released four secretly filmed surveillance videos showing him apparently getting out of a car without difficulty.
This contrasted sharply with the scene before his deportation when he was carried by federal agents in a wheelchair, moaning and sobbing, to be put on a plane to Germany. In this instance, he received an 11th hour reprieve.
The day after his arrival at the Stadelheim prison near the southern city of Munich, medical officials there declared him fit enough to remain in custody.
Deputy prison director Jochen Menzel said then that Demjanjuk was in strikingly good condition.
"He is not typical for his age... he is in better shape than usual for an 89-year-old," he told rolling news channel N24.