March 11 (Bloomberg) -- A Munich court issued an arrest warrant for John Demjanjuk, a retired auto mechanic who was stripped of his U.S. citizenship after he was accused of serving as a guard at Nazi concentration camps.

Prosecutors are investigating Demjanjuk, 88, on charges he participated in the murder of 29,000 Jews in the Sobibor concentration camp, Manfred Noetzel, head of Munich prosecutors, said in an e-mailed statement today. Demjanjuk is likely to be charged with accessory to murder once he’s in Germany, Noetzel said.

Demjanjuk, who gained U.S. citizenship in 1958, was extradited to Israel in 1986 to face charges he was the sadistic SS guard known as “Ivan the Terrible,” who tortured Jewish prisoners while herding them into gas chambers at the Treblinka extermination camp in German-occupied Poland. His 1988 conviction and death sentence were overturned by Israel’s Supreme Court in 1993 and Demjanjuk returned to the U.S.

German investigators reviewed an identification card they obtained from the U.S. Office of Special Investigations and concluded it was authentic. Demjanjuk served in Sobibor from March to September 1943, according to Munich prosecutors.

A native of what is now Ukraine, Demjanjuk has denied ever serving the Nazis and said his fear of being sent back to the Soviet Union prompted him to falsely assert on his U.S. visa application that was a farmer in Poland during the war.

German Court Ruling

The Federal Court of Justice, the country’s top criminal court, ruled in December that Demjanjuk could be prosecuted in Germany. The judges instructed the Munich Regional Court to take over the case, because Demjanjuk had lived in various Bavarian cities between 1945 and 1951.

Germany’s Central Unit For the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, based in Ludwigsburg, had probed Demjanjuk for several years and suggested he should be charged.

An estimated 6 million Jews as well as resistance fighters, gypsies and homosexuals were killed in Nazi death camps across Europe in territories occupied by Germany during the war.

Germany lifted its statute of limitation for murder in 1979, allowing prosecution of Nazi criminals in its courts to continue until today. Murder and genocide are the only crimes under German law with no applicable statute of limitation, which normally would bar prosecution after a certain period of time.

To contact the reporter on this story: Karin Matussek in Berlin at kmatussek@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 11, 2009 11:02 EDT