The World - News from April 18, 1988

John Demjanjuk, who has spent the past 11 years fighting charges that he was the notorious Nazi death camp guard “Ivan the Terrible,” will hear the verdict today in his 14-month-long court battle in Israel. The retired Ohio auto worker spent the evening before his verdict laughing with his family and reading cards from well-wishers. “He’s cautiously optimistic. He thinks the prosecution didn’t make a case against him, and he just wants to go home,” said Ed Nishnic, Demjanjuk’s son-in-law. The three-judge panel’s 450-page judgment is based on more than 15,000 pages of testimony from Holocaust survivors, documents experts and the suspect himself.