Two sessions last week were called off, the last of them
when the defendant suffered dehydration in hot weather, but Demjanjuk appeared
Thursday at the Munich state court.
Judge Ralph Alt said he had informed the former Ohio
autoworker on Wednesday that he was being ordered to attend. He did not
elaborate.
Demjanjuk, as he has for most of his trial, followed the
hearing from a bed in the courtroom and showed no reaction to the proceedings.
Demjanjuk, who was deported from the US to Germany in May
2009, is being tried on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder. He denies the
charges. The defense maintains Demjanjuk was a Soviet soldier captured by the
Germans and spent most of the war in prison camps himself.
Demjanjuk suffers several medical problems and more than
10 sessions have been canceled since last November.
Still, court spokeswoman Margarete Noetzel said "the
judge deemed him fit for trial." Demjanjuk was examined in prison and
doctors gave permission for him to go to court, court doctor Albrecht Stein
said.
German law only allows proceedings to be interrupted for
up to four weeks, and prolonged absence by a defendant can result in a trial
having to be restarted. But Noetzel said that a trial can be suspended for up
to six weeks if a court-appointed doctor testifies that a defendant is ill.
Demjanjuk's lawyer, Ulrich Busch, has repeatedly called
for the trial to be halted, but German doctors have declared Demjanjuk fit to
face trial as long as court sessions are limited to two 90-minute sessions per
day.
A doctor and paramedics have been on hand at every court
session to monitor Demjanjuk's condition.
The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk had his US citizenship
revoked in 1981 after the Justice Department alleged he hid his past as the
notorious Treblinka guard "Ivan the Terrible."
He was extradited to Israel, where he was found guilty
and sentenced to death in 1988, only to have the conviction overturned five
years later as a case of mistaken identity.
