19 July 2009 - 15H21

Twenty-two witnesses in Nazi guard trial: report

Prosecution lawyers in Germany have 22 witnesses lined up for the trial of Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk starting mid-October, Spiegel magazine reported on Sunday.

The judge in the court in the southern city of Munich has already approved eight of the witnesses whose family members were murdered at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi occupied Poland between April and July 1943, Spiegel said.

Prosecutors have charged Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, 89, who was deported from the United States in May, with being a guard at the camp in this period, and with "complicity to murder" 27,900 Jews and others.

Spiegel says that the 93-page charge sheet drawn up by prosecutors sets out to refute Demjanjuk's claim that as a prisoner of war, he had no choice but to work for the Nazis.

They say Demjanjuk would have been able to leave, and cite several cases of non-German guards who managed to get themselves transferred out of camps including Sobibor, Spiegel said.

Demjanjuk's family say he is innocent and his son John Demjanjuk Jr. has said that doctors have given his father about 16 months to live.

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