A German court on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant for John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker living the United States who is suspected of having participated in the murder of 29,000 Jews as a guard at a Nazi death camp.

German prosecutors said that the 88-year-old Demjanjuk, who lives in Ohio, the United States, is suspect of being the brutal "Ivan the Terrible" guard who participated in the murder of 29,000 Jews in the Sobibor concentration camp.

Shortly after the end of the World War II, Demjanjuk lived near the southern German city of Munich as a refugee before emigrating to the United States in 1952. He was extradited to Israel in 1986 to face charges that he worked at the Nazi death camp.

Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death by an Israeli court in 1988 but the ruling were overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court over concerns that an identity card indicating Demjanjuk as a member of the Nazi SS paramilitary group that ran concentration camps might be a Soviet forgery.

He was freed and returned to the United States since then.

However, German investigators reviewed the identification card concluded it was authentic.

Demjanjuk is likely to be charged with accessory to murder once he is in Germany, said head of Munich prosecutors, Manfred Noetzel, on Wednesday.

(Xinhua News Agency March 12, 2009)