German prosecutors on Friday charged a 95-year-old man with more than 36,000 counts of accessory to murder over his alleged time as a Nazi concentration camp guard during World War II. The allegations against the accused, identified only as Hans H, concern atrocities committed at the Mauthausen camp in Austria, the Berlin public prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Hans H is believed to have belonged to the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) between summer 1944 and spring 1945 at Mauthausen, part of the Nazis' vast network of concentration camps where inmates were forced to perform slave labour. Prosecutors argue that by working as a guard at the site, the accused contributed to tens of thousands of prisoner deaths. During his time at the camp, at least 36,223 inmates died. Guards took part in killings by gas, fatal injections, gunfire and other means, while many more prisoners died of hunger or frostbite, prosecutors said.