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World Jewish News
Demjanjuk deportation stayed
05.04.2009
A U.S. immigration judge granted an indefinite stay of deportation for convicted Nazi guard John Demjanjuk.
Demjanjuk, 89, who was stripped in 2002 of his U.S. citizenship for lying about his Nazi past as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland, was scheduled to be deported Sunday from the United States to Germany.
Germany had requested his extradition in order to try him on an indictment that includes 29,000 counts of accessory to murder.
Judge Wayne Iskra ruled late Friday that Demjanjuk can remain in his suburban Cleveland home while Iskra rules on whether deporting Demjanjuk to Germany would constitute "torture," a claim set forth by the family. The family said that Demjanjuk is too old and sick to travel, according to reports. The judge's decision could take days or months to issue.
Demjanjuk was accused in the early 1980s of being the notorious Treblinka death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible," but he was released from jail in Israel after seven years when in the appeals process he could not be identified as "Ivan" beyond a reasonable doubt.
The U.S. Justice Department later reported that Demjanjuk had been a guard at Sobibor and was liable for deportation because he lied about his Nazi past to obtain U.S. citizenship.
The Munich court said it had relied heavily on material provided by the U.S. Office of Special investigations in making its decision to prosecute Demjanjuk.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors filed papers in immigration court Friday to deport Anton Geiser, 84, of Sharon, Pa. for serving in 1943 as an armed SS Death's Head guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.
Источник: JTA
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