A man alleged to have helped to kill almost 30 thousand Jews in a Nazi death camp has been deemed fit to stand trial in Germany by doctors.

John Demjanjuk was extradited from the US and has been held in a jail near Munich since May. His family has fought efforts to put him on trial, arguing that the 89-year-old is too frail. The medical experts placed only one condition – that court appearances be limited to two 90-minute sessions a day. John Demjanjuk was stripped of his US citizenship after being accused in the 1970’s of being Ivan the Terrible, a notoriously sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp. But the court in Israel overturned the sentence of death placed on him when evidence showed it was a case of mistaken identity. The 89-year-old denies claims that he was a guard at the Sobibor death camp and an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews. He claims instead that, as a Red Army soldier, he was captured by Germans in his native Ukraine and kept as a prisoner of war. Officials say the trial may begin by the autumn.More about: War crimes, World War II

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