Munich - The trial of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born man accused of being a Nazi guard who herded thousands of people into gas chambers, cannot begin before early November, a court spokesman said Thursday. Demjanjuk, 89, was deported from his US home to Germany in May and indicted two months ago on 27,900 counts of accessory to murder.
The file is with the Munich court, which must decide whether to open proceedings before a trial date can be scheduled.
That ruling cannot be expected before the end of September, the spokesman said. Dates before early November were not feasible.
Demjanjuk, who turns 90 next April, cannot concentrate on evidence for more than two blocks of 90 minutes daily, German doctors have advised, so any trial is likely to proceed very slowly.
Prosecutors say German records prove he was an auxiliary guard in 1943 at Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. Demjanjuk was acquitted in the 1990s of Israeli charges that he worked at a different Nazi camp, Treblinka.
He is being detained in the sick bay of Munich's Stadelheim Prison.
There has been speculation he may be tried in a prison hall to avoid the strain of daily trips to and fro in a prison van, but a site cannot be chosen or furnished till after state court judges decide if the trial should take place or not.
