(AFP) - Under German law, prosecutors called Thursday for the case of a 96-year-old former Nazi medical orderly at the Auschwitz death camp to be thrown out because he was deemed unfit for trial.
Hubert Zafke had faced charges of 3,681 counts of being an accessory to murder in the concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, but concerns over his mental and physical health had led to repeated postponements of the trial, which began in February 2016 in the northeastern lakeside town of Neubrandenburg. Stefan Urbanek, a spokesman for the regional prosecutor's office, said in a statement that Zafke's dementia has reached a severity that the defendant is no longer able inside and outside the courtroom to reasonably assess his interests or coherently follow or give testimony."
The International Auschwitz Committee, which represents Holocaust survivors, had sharply attacked Germany's handling of the case, saying the court was hurtling "between sloppy ignorance and complete disinterest" in a resolution.