Madrid - Prosecutors at Spain's National Court on Friday sought international arrest warrants for three alleged former guards of Nazi concentration camps. The trio, now in their 80s, are under investigation after Spanish survivors filed a complaint against them.
The prosecutors asked investigating magistrate Ismael Moreno to order the detention of Johann Leprich, Anton Tittjung and Josias Kumpf.
The three were accomplices to genocide during World War II, the prosecutors said.
The suspects have lived in the United States, which stripped them of citizenship.
Suspects in the case also include John Demjanjuk, who was deported to Germany from the United States recently to face charges of taking part in the killings of tens of thousands of Jews.
The Spanish complaint was filed by survivors who were in the concentration camps of Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen and Flossenburg.
Over 7,000 Spaniards are estimated to have been at the camps during World War II. More than 4,000 of them died.
The National Court could handle the case, because the crime of genocide falls under universal jurisdiction and because some of the victims were Spaniards, the prosecutors said.
The National Court has investigated alleged human rights abuses worldwide, ranging from Latin America to Tibet and the US prison camp at Guantanamo.
Parliament recently asked the government to restrict the court's probes only to those cases with a link to Spain, allegedly for fear of diplomatic conflicts.
