1994: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Still in the headlines: Demjanjuk and Koziy

The Demjanjuk case continued to make headlines in 1994. At the start of the year, Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., in a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, called on the Justice Department to investigate its prosecutors' misconduct in the John Demjanjuk case. That, said the Ohio Democrat, should be the focus of the department's efforts - not the deportation of Mr. Demjanjuk, who, as readers will recall, returned to the U.S. in September 1993, two months after being acquitted of being "Ivan the Terrible," the sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp.

Rep. Traficant noted, "Much to my dismay, the Justice Department continues to try and prosecute Mr. Demjanjuk - totally ignoring prosecutorial misconduct charges that were leveled by the U.S. Appeals Court." He added, "Unfortunately, it has become evident that the Justice Department is either unable or unwilling to fully investigate these serious allegations."

The congressman wrote also to President Bill Clinton, suggesting that "The appointment of a special independent prosecutor is the only way to uncover all the facts in this case and assure that justice is done."

The immediate cause of Rep. Traficant's ire was the Justice Department's filing on December 30, 1993, of an appeal of the decision overturning Mr. Demjanjuk's 1987 extradition to Israel, which came after the court found that the U.S. government had committed fraud by withholding evidence from the Demjanjuk defense. The department also asked a federal judge in Cleveland to reopen the denaturalization case against Mr. Demjanjuk so that the department's Nazi hunters, the Office of Special Investigations, could present new evidence that Mr. Demjanjuk had served at Nazi camps other than Treblinka.

Then on February 24, the full 6th Circuit Court of Appeals announced its refusal to reconsider a ruling by the court's three-judge panel that had overturned the Demjanjuk extradition. The ruling by the 15-member court gave the Justice Department 90 days to make a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Still pending, however, was the Justice Department's request that District Judge Frank Battisti reaffirm his denaturalization of Mr. Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk attorneys then filed papers arguing that Judge Battisti should reject that request in light of the 6th Circuit's finding of fraud on the part of OSI prosecutors.

On May 24, the Justice Department did indeed take its case to the Supreme Court, as it asked the highest court in the land to throw out the lower court ruling that prosecutors had committed fraud by withholding exculpatory evidence from the Demjanjuk defense. Solicitor General Drew S. Days said in his petition to the Supreme Court that the Circuit Court's November 1993 finding was impeding the U.S. government's efforts to expel Mr. Demjanjuk. He argued that U.S. prosecutors had acted in good faith and that the failure to produce certain documents did not rise to the level of "egregious and deliberate misconduct, such as bribery of a judge or fabrications of evidence," that typically is found to be fraud upon a court.

Rep. Traficant reacted to the appeal by stating: "Instead of working so hard to overcome a decision by the federal appeals court, the Justice Department should be vigorously investigating charges of prosecutorial misconduct... Our government continues to protect these prosecutors who have broken the law and should be prosecuted themselves. That flies in the face of justice."

The Justice Department lost yet another round on October 3, when the Supreme Court declined to hear its appeal. Thus, the lower court finding of fraud on the part of OSI prosecutors stands. The Demjanjuk family was jubilant. Ed Nishnic, son-in-law and president of the John Demjanjuk Defense Fund, said, "Today's decision makes it absolutely clear that the Department of Justice defrauded the U.S. courts, deceived the American people and destroyed Mr. Demjanjuk's good name."

The New York Times called the Supreme Court's action a potential "fatal blow to the [U.S.] government's 17-year effort to banish John Demjanjuk... once described as one of the most barbaric Nazi figures of the Holocaust."

Though his extradition has been overturned, Mr. Demjanjuk has another battle to fight: regaining his U.S. citizenship. The Supreme Court's denial of certiorari, or review, would now make it difficult for the government to sustain its argument that Mr. Demjanjuk's citizenship should not be restored, and it actually paves the way for reconsideration of his 1981 denaturalization.

But Mr. Demjanjuk's son-in-law feels there is still one more battle: to have cases brought by the OSI against suspected war criminals "criminalized," that is, ensuring that these cases are no longer treated as civil proceedings in which the standards of proof and legal safeguards are much less rigorous than in criminal cases.

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On the home front, Mr. Demjanjuk spent the year living quietly with his family in Ohio. However, Jewish groups, from time to time, staged picketing of his home in Seven Hills, with demonstrators shouting epithets like "bloody murderer."

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There was a new development at the Office of Special Investigations on February 10 as Neal M. Sher, its director, was named executive director of the leading pro-Israel lobby, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

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In related news, the aforementioned Judge Battisti, who presided over the Demjanjuk deportation case, died on November 16 at the age of 72. On his docket at the time of his death was a rehearing of the Demjanjuk case ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court, as Mr. Demjanjuk is seeking to have his citizenship restored.

* * *

Finally, at year's end, came the news that Yoram Sheftel, the outspoken Israeli attorney who took on the defense of Mr. Demjanjuk following the suspicious death of the previous lawyer, had authored a book on the internationally renowned case. Titled "The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial," the 379-page book was released by Goltancz publishers.

According to a book review by Chrystia Freeland that appeared in the December 10-11 issue of the British newspaper The Financial Times, Mr. Sheftel concludes: "Not only was the wrong man put on trial; the whole affair began with a despicable plot, an international conspiracy of five countries - the Soviet Union, Poland, the United States, Germany and Israel."

The Koziy case

This summer, 64-year-old Hanna Snigur recanted testimony she had given in 1976 regarding the Bohdan Koziy case, thus calling into question the veracity of war crimes accusations against the former U.S. resident.

Ms. Snigur said she was told she would be sent to "see the polar bears in Siberia" if she did not testify that in the autumn of 1943 she saw Mr. Koziy, a young Ukrainian militiaman in German-occupied Lysets, carrying off a 4-year-old girl named Monica Singer. Mrs. Snigur says she has spoken out now about the forced testimony because, "I was a false witness and I don't want to sin before God and make an innocent person suffer." She is apparently the first Soviet-era witness to admit she was compelled to give false testimony in a war crimes case.

Soviet-supplied, videotaped testimony was used in the Koziy case, and he was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1984 for concealing his wartime activities when he entered the U.S. Before the U.S. could deport him to the USSR to stand trial, he fled to Costa Rica, which refused a Soviet request to extradite Mr. Koziy. Mr. Koziy, 71 - a man without a passport, without citizenship, without a country - has been living in Costa Rica for nearly a decade, but now wants to go home to his native Ivano-Frankivske region in Ukraine.

In Kalush, the Rebirth Association, a volunteer group that aims to resettle deported ethnic Ukrainians in Ukraine, together with the human rights commission of the Ivano-Frankivske Oblast Council of deputies, is working to prove Mr. Koziy's innocence and facilitate his homecoming. Prompted by a written request from Mr. Koziy to help clear his name, the Rebirth Association turned to regional security services seeking a review of evidence previously gathered in the Koziy case.

The World Jewish Congress, meanwhile, wants Mr. Koziy to stand trial for war crimes against Jewish families in that region, and it began a campaign in midyear to expel Mr. Koziy from Costa Rica. Elan Steinberg, executive director of the New York-based World Jewish Congress, dismissed Mrs. Snigur's recantation, calling it "rubbish."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 25, 1994, No. 52, Vol. LXII

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