The unnamed suspect is accused of assisting in the murder of prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp near Berlin between 1942 and 1945, reported the BBC. The 100-year-old alleged former guard at a Nazi concentration camp will stand trial in Germany accused of complicity in 3,518 murders.
His alleged crimes include complicity in executions by
firing squad and poisonous gas.
Prosecutors confirmed the man would be fit to
stand trial in October.
Prosecutors said the man underwent a medical assessment
which, despite his advanced age, deemed him fit to appear in court for
two-and-a-half hours per day.
Confirmation of the man's fitness to stand trial was first
reported by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Sunday.
The newspaper quoted one lawyer, Thomas Walther, as saying
many of the complainants were "just as old as the accused and expect
justice to be done".
German media say the trial is expected to be one of the last
concerning crimes committed during the Nazi era. The survivors and perpetrators
are now very old.
About 200,000 people were imprisoned at the Sachsenhausen
camp between 1936 and 1945.
Political opponents, prisoners of war and persecuted groups
were among those detained there by the SS, Nazi Germany's foremost security
agency.
The
Sachsenhausen museum says tens of thousands of prisoners died at the
camp as a result of hunger, disease, forced labor, extermination operations
and other causes.
Germany has been pursuing former Nazi camp workers since a
landmark ruling in 2011 that convicted a former guard, John Demjanjuk, as an
accessory to mass murder. He died pending an appeal, but the verdict set a
legal precedent.
Previously, courts had required evidence of direct
involvement in atrocities.
Although the number of suspects in Nazi crimes is dwindling,
prosecutors are still trying to bring individuals to justice.
In July 2020, a 93-year-old former concentration camp guard
was found guilty of complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 prisoners.
But in March this year, prosecutors said a 96-year-old
alleged former camp guard was unfit to stand trial.
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