Alleged Nazi Demjanjuk Cleared for Deportation

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Alleged Nazi Demjanjuk Cleared for Deportation

 

By M.R. KROPKO, Associated Press Writer

 

CLEVELAND – A federal appeals court opened the way again Friday for the Justice Department to deport alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk to Germany to face 29,000 counts of accessory to murder. The three-judge ruling from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati denied a stay of deportation for the 89-year-old retired autoworker from his suburban Cleveland home.

 

"We are currently considering legal options including an appeal to the Supreme Court," his son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

 

"Given the history of this case and no evidence of his personal involvement in even one assault, let alone a murder, this is inhuman even if a court says it is lawful," he said.

 

An arrest warrant in Munich alleges he was a guard in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. Demjanjuk says he was a prisoner of war, not a camp guard.

 

His family says he's too old and sick to be sent to Germany, but the government says he gets around for his age and says surveillance video proves that.

 

The appeals court said it believed the government would provide appropriate care for Demjanjuk while deporting him.

 

"Based on the medical information before the court and the government's representations about the conditions under which it will transport the petitioner, which include an aircraft equipped as a medical air ambulance and attendance by medical personnel, the court cannot find that the petitioner's removal to Germany is likely to cause irreparable harm sufficient to warrant a stay of removal," the court said.

 

The U.S. government will continue to seek the removal of Demjanjuk to Germany, Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said Friday. She provided no information on when that might happen.

 

Immigration officials provided no indication on whether it would move to deport Demjanjuk promptly.

 

"He remains on an order of supervision with electronic monitoring supervised by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement," spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez told The Associated Press in an e-mail.

 

The family made it clear that it would fight the latest deportation threat.

 

A lawsuit was filed in Berlin "to stop the acceptance of my father as a deportee, Demjanjuk Jr. said Friday. The issue is whether Germany can accept him without having filed a formal request for extradition.

 

In the filing, provided to the AP, attorney Ulrich Busch argued that the government's approval of Demjanjuk's deportation is an "evasion of justice" because Germany has not filed a formal request for extradition.

 

Busch also asserts that German authorities have made no provisions for what would happen if Demjanjuk arrives in Germany but is acquitted or not brought to trial for medical reasons.

 

The administrative court in Berlin was closed Friday, a national holiday.

 

The ruling was the latest in a series of developments in a case spanning decades. On April 14, immigration officers carried Demjanjuk in his wheelchair out of his home to deport him on a flight on an executive jet waiting on the tarmac. But within hours, the appeals court blocked the deportation while it reviewed his latest appeal.

 

As he was carried from his home, Demjanjuk had his head flung back, his mouth hung open and he moaned in apparent pain, infuriating relatives who said he had been promised a stretcher in consideration of his back pain.

 

The government responded by sending surveillance video to the court showing Demjanjuk walking unassisted to a doctor's office on April 6. The family said that Demjanjuk has good days and that the video didn't reflect his overall health situation.

 

Demjanjuk has said he suffers severe spinal, hip and leg pain and has a bone marrow disorder, kidney disease, anemia, kidney stones, arthritis, gout and spinal deterioration.

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Demjanjuk Deported to Germany

 

(CNN) -- Nazi war crimes suspect John Demjanjuk was deported to Germany on Monday evening after he was removed from his Cleveland, Ohio-area home in the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers earlier in the day.

 

An ambulance transported him to an airstrip at the Cleveland airport. The plane carrying Demjanjuk departed at 7:13 p.m.

 

Demjanjuk, 89, is wanted by German authorities for his alleged involvement during World War II in killings at Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in Poland.

 

His deportation closed a chapter in one of the longest-running pursuits of an alleged Holocaust perpetrator in history. It also sets the stage for what likely will prove to be an extraordinary German war crimes trial.

 

The Supreme Court last Thursday denied a stay of deportation for Demjanjuk. 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 cleared the way for the Justice Department to move ahead with the deportation.

 

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 last Wednesday had also ruled against a request for a stay. Officials in Berlin have issued an arrest warrant charging Demjanjuk with being an accessory to the murder of about 29,000 civilians at Sobibor in 1943.

 

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

 

Immigration officers previously entered Demjanjuk's 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 had 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.

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The timing of this is just right. The deportation took place on the 49th anniversary of the Israeli Mossad's capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina - May 11, 1960:

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(Sorry, I can't find the name of the author of this article.)

 

On May 11, 1960 at 8:05pm, four Mossad agents abducted German citizen Ricardo Klement from a bus stop in Buenos Aires. He was shoved into a waiting car, his hands and feet tied together, and was blindfolded and gagged. The commandos then admonished their captive: "If you don't keep still, you'll be shot." Forty five minutes later, they arrived at the safehouse.

 

There his captors satisfied themselves of the man's identity by referring to a list of distinguishing features taken from his World War II medical records. The man they had in custody was fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann. Given a choice between summary execution and a public trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann chose the trial. The operatives disguised him as an airline crewman, drugged him, and smuggled him aboard an El-Al flight bound for Israel. The next time his feet touched the ground, it was the runway tarmac in Tel Aviv.

 

When the world learned of Eichmann's surreptitious extradition, it immediately sparked an international incident. Argentina expressed outrage over the violation of their sovereignty and demanded that he be returned at once. Israel promptly invited them to fuck themselves with a pineapple, and proceeded in April 1961 to begin legal proceedings against the war criminal.

 

During the war, Eichmann worked in the Gestapo. In October 1934, Eichmann's first assignment in the Department of Research was looking into Freemasonry. Predictably, the Nazis believed that the Masons were assisting the Jews in their attempts to gain world domination. Eichmann's job was to compile information on prominent Freemasons in Germany.

 

The next year, he was transferred to the Department of Jewish Affairs. Eichmann's enthusiasm for his new assignment was obvious. He taught himself Hebrew and Yiddish, and studied Jewish history and culture. In March 1938, he was appointed special officer for Zionist affairs. There he streamlined the Central Emigration Office, dramatically improving the efficiency of the process which stripped Jews of their possessions and issued them temporary passports, in order to expel them from Germany. Then Eichmann was sent to Austria to repeat his success there.

 

In October 1939, Eichmann organized the forced deportation of Austrian and Czechoslovokian Jews to the ghettos. He also developed a plan to ship off four million Jews to Madagascar, but this strategy was abandoned in favor of a more permanent one.

 

Eichmann arranged the secret Wannsee Conference, held in January 1942. Here the finishing touches were made to the final solution of the Jewish question. As Eichmann later conceded at trial: "The discussion covered killing, elimination, and annihilation." There Eichmann presented his report on the experimental use of truck-mounted gas chambers. Sort of like a fumigation tent on wheels. At the meeting it was agreed that this technique would be expanded for use on a massive scale. After Eichmann wrote up and circulated the meeting minutes, concentration camps were redesignated as death camps, and equipped with gas chambers and crematories.

 

It was Eichmann's responsibility to solve the endless logistical problems involved in transporting Jews to the death camps. He traveled all over Europe to inspect the incredible undertaking and grease the wheels wherever necessary. In a 1944 communique to Heinrich Himmler, Eichmann estimated that the SS had killed about six million Jews. Later this letter would be presented as damning evidence at trial.

 

On April 11, 1961 Eichmann was charged with crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish people. His trial was broadcast on TV (the first ever), and drew big worldwide ratings as the first reality television series.

 

As a rule, court trials are pretty boring, but this one had some ingenious plot twists. At one point, Eichmann had the balls to claim that the forced emigration of the Jewish people was consistent with the aims of Zionism, making him a friend to Zionists. Probably the best moment was when the prosecution's star witness suffered a paralytic stroke on the stand and had to be rushed to a hospital.

 

Eichmann's sole defense was claiming that he had been a petty government functionary, merely following the orders of superiors. His explanation failed to persuade the judges. On May 31, 1962, Eichmann was hanged in Ramleh prison. His body was cremated and the ashes scattered in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, beyond the territorial waters of the state of Israel.

 

Eichmann's last words were reported as being:

 

"Long live Germany. Long live Austria. Long live Argentina. These are the countries with which I have been most closely associated and I shall not forget them. I had to obey the rules of war and my flag. I am ready."