LUDWIGSBURG - Germany's national office for catching Nazi war criminals rejected criticism by the Simon Wiesenthal Center that not enough of them were being prosecuted.

Kurt Schrimm, who heads the special prosecutions office in Ludwigsburg, said the slowing pace was related to the scarcity of legally acceptable evidence 62 years after World War II.

Schrimm told Deutsche Presse-Agentur in an interview. Often important documents were missing or witnesses had died of old age.