Polish prosecutors are seeking the arrest of a 98-year-old resident of Minnesota, US, who they believe served as a Nazi commander during WWII.

The Warsaw-based Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a government-affiliated organisation which investigates crimes against Poles during and after WWII, has identified "Michael K." as having ordered the killing of 44 Poles in eastern Poland.

Polish prosecutor Robert Janicki said he is “100 percent” certain that the suspect is Mykhailo Karkoć, who went into hiding following the war.

“Michael K. is suspected of committing a crime against humanity which at the same time constitutes a war crime. On July 23, 1944, while commanding a Ukrainian company in the service of the Germans, he ordered his subordinate soldiers to kill the inhabitants of the villages of Chłaniów, Chłaniow-Kolonia and Władysławin-Kolonia and burn down the buildings in those villages,” the IPN said in a statement quoted by the PAP news agency.

The IPN is expected to file a request for the US to hand the suspect over to the Polish authorities. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

A German court declined to proceed with a bid to extradite him from the US in 2015 as he was unfit to stand trial.

In a 2013 statement, the IPN said that Mykhailo Karkoć, born in 1919 in Lutsk, was an officer of "the Ukrainian Self-Defence Legion – the 31 battalion of Schutzmannschaft German Security Police (Sipo)”. (rg/pk)