Germany arrests three suspected former Auschwitz guards

Three suspected former SS guards of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz were arrested in a series of home raids across three states, German prosecutors said.

The three men, aged 88,92 and 94, are suspected of having participated in murders at the Auschwitz extermination camp and were remanded in custody.

The former guards underwent medical tests before facing a judge who confirmed their fitness to be detained in a prison hospital.

For more than 60 years German courts had only prosecuted Nazi war criminals if they were found guilty of committing the murders, but a landmark court case in 2011 gave prosecutors the legal authority to bring to justice anyone who had been an accomplice in the killings, establishing that all former camp guards can be tried.

German prosecutors said further home raids were carried out at three more locations while other homes in the western states of Hessee and North Rhine-Westphalia were also raided.

"Various records and documents from the Nazi era were seized, and their evaluation is ongoing," said in a statement about the six home raids.

Frankfurt prosecutors separately confirmed two raids in Hesse state Wednesday, in which police searched the homes of men aged 89 and 92 but reported no arrests.

The men were suspected of having served as Auschwitz SS guards from 1942 to 1944.

More than one million people, mostly European Jews, were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, operated by the Nazis from 1940 until Russian forces liberated it on January 27, 1945.