Demjanjuk Seeks Citizenship

Attorneys for John Demjanjuk filed court papers today to have the retired auto worker’s U.S. citizenship restored, more than a week before a panel of Israeli judges is to announce its verdict in Demjanjuk’s yearlong war crimes trial.

The papers claim that the U.S. Justice Department suppressed information from witnesses that would have helped Demjanjuk substantiate his claim of mistaken identity. Demjanjuk, 68, was tried on charges that he was the death camp guard called Ivan the Terrible, who ran the Treblinka gas chambers in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1942 and 1943. An estimated 850,000 Jews were murdered at Treblinka.