German authorities are moving ahead with efforts to prosecute a 100-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, nearly 80 years after the end of World War II. The higher regional court in Frankfurt overturned an earlier decision deeming the suspect, identified as Gregor Formanek by German media, unfit to stand trial.

Formanek was charged last year with aiding and abetting the murder of 3,322 people during his time as a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin between July 1943 and February 1945. A court in Hanau, Hesse state, had declined to open proceedings, citing an expert’s assessment in February that claimed Formanek’s mental and physical condition rendered him unable to face trial.

However, the Frankfurt court ruled that the expert’s findings were insufficiently substantiated. The court highlighted that the expert acknowledged he was unable to directly interview the defendant or conduct extensive psychiatric tests.

Since a landmark 2011 ruling lowered the evidentiary threshold for complicity in war crimes, several trials have been initiated against aging suspects linked to Holocaust atrocities.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)