The public prosecution department is determined to press ahead with extraditing an elderly rabbi to Israel to face sexual abuse charges, news agency ANP says on Thursday.

The extradition was delayed at the end of last year after Eliezer Berland’s lawyer said most of the offences he has been charged with relate to events which occurred in parts of Israel beyond the borders recognised by the Netherlands.

The hearings resumed on Thursday with the public prosecution dismissing these claims.

The Israeli authorities claim jurisdiction over the territories so the argument is irrelevant, the prosecutor said.

Berland was arrested at Schiphol airport in September but released from custody the next day.

The claims against the rabbi first emerged in 2012 and since then the rabbi has managed to keep out of Israel’s hands, spending time in the US, Switzerland, Morocco, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Berland’s lawyer told the court on Thursday his client, who is 77, is so ill that extraditing him would be inhuman.