A 95-year-old suspected Nazi war criminal was deported from the US to Germany, bringing to an end a 13-year stand-off in which no country wanted to take him in.

Jakiw Palij was taken from his home in the New York and flown to Düsseldorf in the early hours of the morning, after Germany finally agreed to accept him.

But he is thought unlikely to face prosecution over his alleged crimes because there is not enough documentary evidence against him.

Mr Palij was stripped of his US citizenship in 2003 after he admitted that during the Second World War he had served as a volunteer guard at Trawniki concentration camp in occupied Poland, where thousands of Jews were murdered.

He was ordered to be deported in 2005 but no country would agree to take him. Germany refused because he was not a German citizen and his crimes were not committed in Germany.