[JURIST] A German court ruled Friday that alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk [NNDB profile; JURIST news archive] can stand trial on accessory to murder charges that took place during World War II. The Munich Regional Court said that it would hear the case and ordered that Demjanjuk remain in custody despite pleas by his friends and family that he is too old and sick to face trial. The ruling follows an earlier determination by German prison medical experts that Demjanjuk is fit to stand trial [DPA report]. Demjanjuk faces 27,900 accessory counts stemming from his alleged involvement as a guard at the Sobibor [Death Camps backgrounder] concentration camp where more than 260,000 people were executed in gas chambers. The former Ohio resident was deported in May by the US after exhausting his appeals for a stay and having his objections to extradition rejected [JURIST reports] by a German court. The court did not set an exact date for the start of the trial, but it indicated [Bloomberg report] it is likely to be in November.

Similar proceedings are currently taking place in Spain. Last month, Spanish judge Ismael Moreno issued arrest warrants [JURIST report] for US residents Johann Leprich and Anton Tittjung and Austrian resident Josias Kumpf who are accused of being former Nazi guards. The three allegedly participated in the torture and disappearance [El Pais report, in Spanish] of more than 4,300 Spaniards at the Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen and Flossenburg concentration camps. A Spanish prosecutor had asked in May that arrest warrants be issued [JURIST report] under Spain's universal jurisdiction [AI backgrounder] doctrine, which gives Spain jurisdiction over foreign torture, terrorism, and war crimes only if the case is not subject to the legal system of the country involved. The prosecutor did not seek a warrant for Demjanjuk who is considered a fourth suspect in that case. The suit was initiated in June 2008 by rights group Equipo Nizkor [advocacy website], which petitioned [press release, in Spanish] Spain's National Court to press charges against the four accused guards.

[JURIST] A three-judge panel of the UK High Court [official website] strongly criticized [Guardian report] the Ministry of Defence (MOD) [official website] Friday for its failure to properly setup an independent inquiry into claims that war crimes had been committed by British soldiers following a May 2004 gun battle, known as the "Battle of Danny Boy" [BBC backgrounder], in Southern Iraq. The panel, which was composed of Lord Justice Scott Baker, Justice Silber, and Justice Sweeney, derided the MOD's lack of disclosure of information in the case, saying that MOD's chief witness, deputy head of the Royal Military Police (RMP) [official website] Colonel Dudley Giles, lacked credibility because his actions appeared to have blocked the proper function of the inquiry. The MOD had originally agreed [JURIST report] to set up the independent investigation in July, as the result of allegations [JURIST report] brought by a group of Iraqis who claimed that British soldiers killed as many as 20 detainees and tortured others following the battle. The panel is scheduled to reconvene in two weeks to decide a proper course for the inquiry.

In July, UK Secretary of State for Defence Bob Ainsworth [official profile] admitted to the High Court that the MOD had failed to disclose documents that showed that senior government officials were aware of allegations of torture, mutilation, and murder by British troops at Camp Abu Naji following the battle of Danny Boy, and therefore hindered the ongoing judicial review of an RMP investigation. In April, six Iraqis brought suit [BBC report] alleging mistreatment and illegal killings following the firefight and sought the creation of an independent inquiry into the incident. The MOD initially refused this request and urged reliance on an early RMP investigation [Guardian report], which found no evidence of wrongdoing, saying that the lack of timely complaints by Iraqis discredited the allegations. However, soon thereafter documents were made available by the MOD that showed that the International Committee of the Red Cross [official website] had recorded the complaints within days of the incident.