A German court in Munich on Friday decided to put off, at least until the end of the year, the legal proceedings against the Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk from Ukraine for murdering thousands of Jews.

Demjanjuk, 90, is charged as an accomplice in the murder of 27,900 Jews, prisoners in Sobibor extermination camp in occupied Poland, between March and October 1943.

The defense pressure for suspension of the process and the advanced age of the accused and witnesses increased the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the trial, particularly among plaintiffs, victims’ relatives and the few survivors.

On Firday, the prosecution obtained testimonies from numerous witnesses, along with the presentation of a vast documentation, some of which have historical value, such as the identity card of a Sobibor guard at the service of the special nazi force (SS) in which there is a picture of Demjanjuk.

An Israeli court indicted him in the mid 1980s as the alleged executioner at Treblinka concentration camp and he spent five years on death row to obtain the revocation of the sentence.

In a statement read out by his lawyer in April, Demjanjuk described the trial as “torture”, adding: “I find it an unbearable injustice that Germany is trying to make me, a prisoner of war, into a war criminal with this trial.”

(Source: Hindustan Times)