Immigration judge rules Demjanjuk can be deported; appeal is expected

CLEVELAND - The chief immigration judge of the United States ruled on June 20 that John Demjanjuk, who the U.S. Justice Department claims was a guard at Nazi concentration camps in Sobibor, Majdanek and Flossenberg, can be deported from the United States.

At the same time, Judge Michael J. Creppy said Mr. Demjanjuk has the right to fight any deportation order. He had until June 30 to file an appeal.

According to the Associated Press, Thomas Elliot, Mr. Demjanjuk's lawyer in Washington, said he would fight Demjanjuk's deportation on two grounds: that Judge Creppy is not entitled to make rulings in the case, and that deportation would amount to torture. Demjanjuk is in frail health.

Mr. Elliot also said the Justice Department had informed him that it favors deporting Mr. Demjanjuk to his native Ukraine, or to Poland or Germany.

Mr. Demjanjuk, 85, was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 2002 because he allegedly lied on his application to enter the United States after World War II.

Mr. Demjanjuk denies that he ever served the Nazis, but admits giving false statements when entering the United States in order to escape repatriation to the Soviet Union. He says he served in the Soviet army and was a prisoner of war captured by the Germans. Mr. Demjanjuk has claimed to be a victim of mistaken identity.

The Demjanjuk case dates back to 1977, when the Justice Department first accused him of being "Ivan the Terrible," a notorious guard at the Treblinka death camp.

A naturalized U.S. citizen, he lost that status in 1981, when a court stripped him of his citizenship. He was ordered deported and in 1986 was extradited to Israel, where a war crimes trial began a year later.

He was sentenced to death in 1988, but that conviction was overturned on appeal in 1993 by Israel's Supreme Court, and Mr. Demjanjuk returned home to Seven Hills, Ohio. His citizenship was restored in 1998. In that 1998 ruling Judge Paul R. Matia cited fraud on the part of U.S. government prosecutors and wrote that attorneys of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) "acted with reckless disregard for their duty to the court and their discovery obligations" in failing to disclose potentially exculpatory evidence to the Demjanjuk defense.

In 1999 the Justice Department filed suit once again to seek revocation of Mr. Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship on the grounds that he illegally gained entry into the United States and illegally gained U.S. citizenship because he had concealed his service as a camp guard. His citizenship was revoked in February 2002, with Judge Matia saying there is enough evidence to prove Mr. Demjanjuk was a guard at Nazi death and forced labor camps without eyewitness corroboration. That ruling was affirmed in April 2004 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th District.

In December 2003, the Justice Department had asked that Mr. Demjanjuk be deported.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 3, 2005, No. 27, Vol. LXXIII

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