Germany to put former SS sergeant on trial next year

A German court says a 93-year-old former SS sergeant will go on trial early next year on 170,000 counts of accessory to murder over allegations he served as an Auschwitz death camp guard.

Reinhold Hanning is accused of helping the death camp run by serving as a guard there from January 1943 to June 1944.

The Detmold state court said Monday his trial will likely start mid-February and sessions will be limited to two hours a day in deference to his age and health.

Defense attorney Johannes Salmen didn't immediately return a call for comment. He's previously said his client acknowledges serving at the Auschwitz I part of the camp complex, but denies serving at the Birkenau section, where most of its 1.1 million victims were killed.

Another former Nazi SS sergeant who served at the Auschwitz death camp was convicted on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder in July.

Oskar Groening, 94, was given a four-year sentence. His defense team had called for him to be acquitted, arguing that as far as the law is concerned he did not facilitate mass murder.

Groening's was the first to test a new line of German legal reasoning that has unleashed an 11th-hour wave of new investigations of Nazi war crimes suspects. 

Wire services