Bid to deport alleged Nazi guard stalls

An attempt to deport an 89-year-old alleged former Nazi death camp guard from the United States was last night blocked by an appeal court.

US immigration agents removed John Demjanjuk from his home in Ohio to take him to Germany. Demjanjuk was carried out of the house in a wheelchair and placed in a waiting van. His son, John Demjanjuk Jr, had filed motions earlier in the day asking the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay of deportation. The government objected.

German prosecutors claim Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, was an accessory to some 29,000 deaths during the war at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Once in Germany, he could be formally charged in court.

In 1988, Demjanjuk 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. Israel's highest court later overturned his sentence and freed him, after new evidence showed "Ivan the Terrible" was a different man.

Yorkshire Post