L.A. Judge Denies Suppressing Evidence in ‘Ivan the Terrible’ Case : Courts: Ex-Justice Department lawyer testifies he never saw papers that family says would have cleared accused Nazi war criminal.

A federal immigration judge took the witness stand in a Los Angeles federal court Friday to deny that he suppressed evidence related to the deportation of accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk.

Bruce Einhorn, a former Justice Department lawyer who is now an immigration judge in Los Angeles, said he had not seen documents that Demjanjuk’s family believes would have shown he was not “Ivan the Terrible,” as prosecutors charged. Demjanjuk was deported from the United States and extradited to Israel, where he was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to death. He has appealed that verdict.

Einhorn’s testimony came as part of an unusual set of hearings investigating the Justice Department’s conduct in the case, in particular the question of whether prosecutors had information that could have cleared Demjanjuk but withheld it from the defense. U.S. District Judge Thomas Wiseman is presiding over those hearings, which have been held across the country.

Ed Nishnic, Demjanjuk’s son-in-law, said after the hearing that he accepted Einhorn’s testimony as being true, but added: “Did (other prosecutors) have information that someone other than John Demjanjuk operated the gas chamber at Treblinka? Yes, they did. Did they disclose that information to the defense? No, they didn’t.”