NAZI DEPORTATION HALTED: John Demjanjuk Staying In US

CLEVELAND — John Demjanjuk was released from federal custody Tuesday evening, just hours after six immigration officers removed the accused Nazi death camp guard from his suburban home in a wheelchair, authorities said. Federal officials had taken Demjanjuk to a federal building in downtown Cleveland, but the 89-year-old retired autoworker's impending return to Germany was halted when three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of deportation.

An arrest warrant in Germany claims Demjanjuk was an accessory to some 29,000 deaths during World War II at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Once in Germany, he could be formally charged in court.

Demjanjuk was driven to his home in Seven Hills after his release, former son-in-law and family spokesman Ed Nishnic said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement they'll supervise him through electronic monitoring.

In granting the stay, the three-judge panel said it would further consider Demjanjuk's motion to reopen the U.S. case that ordered the deportation, in which he says painful medical ailments would make travel to Germany torturous.

Citing the need to act because of the possibility of Demjanjuk's imminent deportation, the court issued the stay without addressing the U.S. government's argument that the court had no jurisdiction to rule on Demjanjuk's appeal.

The government planned to continue its legal battle in court, said Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney.

Nishnic said the family was relieved the stay was granted.

"We're delighted. We're prepared to make our arguments with the 6th Circuit, and it's just a shame that Mr. Demjanjuk had to go through the hell that he went through once again this morning," he said as he walked into a federal building in Cleveland where Demjanjuk was being held.

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Earlier Tuesday, Demjanjuk's wife, Vera, sobbed and held her hands to her mouth as immigration officers loaded his wheelchair into a van at their home. As the van moved down the street, Vera turned and waved, sobbing in the arms of a granddaughter.

Several family members, including a 10-year-old grandson, were in the home when the officers removed Demjanjuk.

Nishnic said Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, told his family, "I love you," in Ukrainian and was aware that the officers were there to take him to Germany.

Nishnic said his former father-in-law moaned in pain as he was placed in the wheelchair.

"It was horrendous. He was in such pain. I wouldn't want to see anyone go through something like that," said granddaughter Olivia Nishnic, 20.

John Demjanjuk Jr., who filed the appeal with the 6th Circuit earlier Tuesday, said the government hadn't lived up to earlier understandings of how his father would be removed.

"They told me that they would have an ambulance. They told me we would have three to five days' notice, and obviously you can't believe everything the government tells you," he told The Associated Press by phone while headed back to Cleveland from the federal appeals court in Cincinnati.

He predicted his father would not survive long enough in Germany to stand trial.

"If he is deported, if this madness and inhumane action is not stopped by the 6th Circuit, he will live out his life in a (German) hospital. He will never be put on trial," he said. "It makes absolutely no sense that the Germans, after nearly killing him in combat, would try to kill him once again."

The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center said it was undeterred.

"We remain confident that John Demjanjuk will be deported and finally face the bar of justice for the unspeakable crimes he committed during World War II when he was a guard at the Sobibor death camp," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, Wiesenthal Center founder.

"His work at the Sobibor death camp was to push men, women and children into the gas chamber. He had no mercy, no pity and no remorse for the families whose lives he was destroying forever," Hier said.

Deborah Dwork, a professor of Holocaust history at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said the Demjanjuk case illustrates that there is no statute of limitations on the crime of genocide.

"The issue is holding him accountable, no matter what his age," she said.

Dwork said she believes German prosecutors acted cautiously and deliberately in bringing their case because they can't afford to run a weak trial. Germany's image in the eyes of the international community would be tarnished if Demjanjuk is acquitted, she said.

Demjanjuk, a native Ukrainian, has denied being a Nazi guard and claims he was a prisoner of war of the Germans. He came to the United States after the war as a refugee.

Demjanjuk had been tried in Israel after accusations surfaced that he was the notorious Nazi guard "Ivan the Terrible" in Poland at the Treblinka death camp. He was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a conviction later overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

A U.S. judge revoked his citizenship in 2002 based on Justice Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other Nazi-run death and forced labor camps.

An immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine.

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Associated Press Writers Thomas J. Sheeran in Cleveland, Terry Kinney in Cincinnati, Kantele Franko and Matt Leingang in Columbus, Devlin Barrett in Washington and Roland Losch in Munich contributed to this report.

Comments

[Ergon]

Proof he was a 'Nazi', please?

[Marcus01]

Demjanjuk was originally charged with genocide at Treblinka as a result of false information provided by the KGB in 1979. The Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction in Israel as a result of that.

The Americans who have been persecuting him were not too happy about him being found innocent of their false charges, so the pathetic SOBs have found something else to charge him with.

Now he's charged with being an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews at Sobidor, even though there is not one witness to his being there. Not one. These crimes are alleged to have occurred at the exact same time he was alleged to be at Treblinka.

This poor old man is another victim of the US Criminal Injustice System -- where you're guilty even when you're innocent.

[intp1]

Demjanjuk is 89 has a kidney tumor and must have blood transfusions every month; he is unlikely to survive even jury selection.
I researched his rank, because I could not understand why any other than a ranking officer would be prosecuted for a war crime if merely following orders. It turns out that if he was a guard as alleged, he would have been considered a 'Wachmann' which was a lowest of low, indentured servant supplementing the military in the prison camps. He had been captured by the Germans during operations in the Crimea; he then, if as alleged, would have 'volunteered' to help the German military as a guard in these camps, i.e. , not a German or a Nazi but an illegally mistreated POW!
If this guy is guilty then every German senior center should be emptied of all the surviving German WWII veterans of any rank down to private and prosecuted for contributing to the war effort which includes the implementation of the holocaust. It doesn’t matter if you are shooting at Americans in the Ardennes or unloading bodies from the Ovens, you wouldn’t last long not obeying orders, nor would it stop those deeds from getting done if you did.
They have run out of real WWII war criminals to prosecute and so are feeding this wretched old man to the grinder. There are plenty of current war crimes to worry about but this is a deliberate distraction from such as Gitmo and Gaza.