May 7



GERMANY/USA:

High court denies deportation stay for accused Nazi guard

The Supreme Court on Thursday denied a stay of deportation for alleged
Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk, who faces a war crimes prosecution
in Germany.

Justice John Paul Stevens without comment refused to intervene in the
planned transfer from the United States.

Federal courts have all rejected his appeals, and the order from Stevens
clears the way for the Justice Department to move ahead with the
deportation. No date for the transfer has been set.

Demjanjuk's lawyers had asked the high court to consider their claims
that he is too ill and frail to be sent overseas. They also raised human
rights and other legal issues in their last-minute appeal.

A German court Wednesday had also ruled against a request for a stay.

Officials in Berlin have issued an arrest warrant charging the 89-year-old
Ohio resident with being an accessory to the murder of about 29,000
civilians at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland in 1943.

The native Ukrainian has long claimed he was a prisoner of war, not a
death camp guard.

Immigration officers entered his Cleveland-area home April 14, and
carried him out in his wheelchair to a waiting van. He was held for a few
hours and then returned to his residence after a federal appeals court
ruled temporarily in his favor.

Demjanjuk appealed unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court last year.

He was once accused by the United States and Israel of being a
notoriously brutal S.S. guard at the Treblinka camp known as "Ivan the
Terrible."

After appeals, that allegation was eventually dropped by both countries,
but later other allegations were made against him.

The case is Demjanjuk v. Holder (08A978).

(source: CNN)


********************************


US court rejects Demjanjuk plea ---- John Demjanjuk denies the charges
against him


A US Supreme Court judge has rejected a bid by alleged Nazi death camp
guard John Demjanjuk to block his deportation to Germany for trial.

The 89-year-old Ohio resident had argued that he was too ill to be moved.

But Justice John Paul Stevens turned down his request to intervene in the
case.

Mr Demjanjuk denies charges of being a guard at the Sobibor death camp in
World War II and an accessory in the deaths of 29,000 Jews.

He says he was captured by the Germans in his native Ukraine during the
war and kept as a prisoner of war.

DEMJANJUK CASE TIMELINE
1952: Gains entry into the US, claiming he spent most of the war as a
German prisoner
1977: First charged with war crimes, accused of being "Ivan the Terrible"
1981: Stripped of US citizenship
1986: Extradited to Israel
1993: Israeli Supreme Court overturns conviction, ruling that he is not
Ivan the Terrible
2002: Loses US citizenship after a judge said there was proof he worked at
Nazi camps
2005: A judge rules in favour of deportation to his native Ukraine
2009: Germany issues an arrest warrant for him; US immigration agents
seize him at his home but later release him


In March, German prosecutors filed charges against Mr Demjanjuk and issued
a warrant for his arrest.

US federal agents briefly removed him from his home in April, but a stay
of deportation was granted after his family said he was too ill to be
moved.

A three-judge panel from the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio then
ruled that the removal could go ahead, saying it was satisfied that Mr
Demjanjuk would be provided with adequate care.

Mr Demjanjuk could now appeal against Justice Stevens' ruling to the full
Supreme Court or ask another justice for a stay, media reports said.

Lawyers for Mr Demjanjuk have also launched an appeal in Germany, arguing
that it should retract its extradition request on humanitarian grounds.

Camp guard

Mr Demjanjuk arrived in the US in 1952 as a refugee, settling in
Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked in the car industry.

In 1988 he was sentenced to death in Israel for crimes against humanity
after Holocaust survivors identified him as the notorious "Ivan the
Terrible", a guard at the Treblinka death camp.

But Israel's highest court later overturned his sentence, after documents
from the former Soviet Union indicated that "Ivan the Terrible" had
probably been a different man.

Mr Demjanjuk returned to the US, but in 2002 had his US citizenship
stripped because of his failure to disclose his work at Nazi camps when he
first arrived as a refugee.

In 2005, a US immigration judge ruled that he could be deported to
Germany, Poland or Ukraine.

(source: BBC News)