Demjanjuk war crimes trial begins
John Demjanjuk has been taken by ambulance to a Munich court to face charges of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at a Nazi death camp.
The start of the trial marked the final chapter of some 30 years of efforts to prosecute the retired Ohio car worker.
The trial opened with Demjanjuk's lawyer filing a motion against the judge and prosecutors, accusing them of bias.
Demjanjuk, 89, was deported in May from the US to Germany, and has been in custody since then. He could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted for his alleged activities as a guard at the Sobibor camp in occupied Poland.
He was deemed fit for trial, though his family said he is terminally ill. In deference to his fragile health, his trial at the Munich state court has been limited to two 90-minute sessions per day.
Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said on his way into the trial that it was important it was finally taking place. "This sends a very powerful message that even if you didn't have the rank of an officer, you still have responsibility," Mr Zuroff said.
Demjanjuk became a household name in the 1980s when he was extradited by the US for trial in Israel on charges that he was the notoriously brutal guard at Treblinka who earned the moniker "Ivan the Terrible" for his deeds.
He was convicted in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and spent seven years in prison until Israel's Supreme Court in 1993 overturned the conviction. It ruled that another person, not Demjanjuk, was actually "Ivan the Terrible."
Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, a former Soviet Red Army soldier, is now accused of volunteering to serve as a guard under the SS after being taken prisoner by the Nazis in 1942.
According to the indictment, he served as a simple "wachmann," or guard, under the SS. As such, he is the lowest-ranking person to go on trial for Nazi war crimes.
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