U.S. Court Calls for Return of Demjanjuk : Extradition: Panel seeks examination of government’s handling of proceedings that sent him to Israel. Jerusalem may not be bound by ruling.

WASHINGTON — Contrary to the Justice Department’s stance, the man Israel acquitted of being Nazi death camp guard “Ivan the Terrible” must be allowed to return to the United States while the propriety of his 1986 extradition is examined by an American court, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

The ruling, handed down in Cincinnati, abruptly threw the fate of John Demjanjuk, still being held in Israel pending a decision by that government on whether to file new war crimes charges against him, into confusion.

In an oral ruling read from the bench, the court held that Demjanjuk, acquitted last week by Israel’s Supreme Court, should be allowed to return while it examines the U.S. government’s handling of his original extradition.

The Justice Department now must decide whether to appeal the ruling to the full 6th Circuit court, to the Supreme Court or to sit tight while Israel decides on its next step. If Israel decides to file new charges, it is not clear whether it would consider itself bound--on legal or political grounds--by the appeals court ruling.

The original extradition order for Demjanjuk was approved by the 6th Circuit, and the three-judge panel on Tuesday said that action seven years ago had been taken with the understanding that he be tried only on charges that he was the sadistic guard Ivan at the Treblinka death camp in Poland during World War II.

Trying the retired, 73-year-old Cleveland auto mechanic on other charges would be an apparent violation of international law, Chief Judge Gilbert Merritt said.

The three-judge panel denied a Justice Department request to stay its ruling pending an appeal. Neal M. Sher, director of the department’s Nazi-hunting office of special investigations, declined to discuss the ruling.

A department spokesman said that an upcoming written order would have to be studied before the department decides what to do.

Ed Nishnic, Demjanjuk’s son-in-law who flew to Ohio Monday night from Israel to hear the decision, said that the family was “elated” with the decision, according to the Associated Press. “We feel that justice was done today. I believe that the Israeli court must let him go,” Nishnic said.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, who followed the case closely and attended part of Demjanjuk’s trial in Israel, denounced the 6th Circuit panel’s ruling as “a very poor decision, a misplaced compassion for a perpetrator and, I think, a mischaracterization of Demjanjuk as a victim.”

While Demjanjuk was acquitted last week of being “Ivan the Terrible,” evidence presented at his trial suggested that he was a guard at another concentration camp, Sobibor. No witnesses were ever found who could place him there, however.

Last month, federal Judge Thomas A. Wiseman Jr., serving as a special master for the 6th Circuit, advised the judges that errors the Justice Department had made in investigating Demjanjuk did not invalidate his denaturalization.

Wiseman said while Demjanjuk may not have been the Treblinka Ivan, evidence still indicates that he worked at Nazi Germany’s Trawniki facility, where death camp guards were trained--sufficient grounds for losing American citizenship on the basis of lying on immigration papers.

After the Justice Department said that Demjanjuk would not be allowed to return to his home in Cleveland, he sought refuge in his native Ukraine.

But on Sunday, Israel’s Supreme Court blocked Demjanjuk’s departure to Kiev for at least 10 days and asked the Israeli attorney general to decide whether to try him on other charges.

On Monday, two Israeli newspapers reported that Demjanjuk is unlikely to be retried because Israel lacks evidence to convict him.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel said Tuesday that, if Demjanjuk goes to Ukraine, he might face criminal prosecution there if sufficient grounds exist to try him.

Ambassador Yuri Shcherbak also said Demjanjuk had not been “invited” to seek asylum in Ukraine and lamented Israeli mass media reports that he said “distorted the Ukrainian stand on the Demjanjuk case and nonobjectively described the role of Ukrainians in tragic events of World War II.”

The Ukraine has a distinguished war record in fighting the Nazis and a policy of investigating war criminals, Shcherbak said in a statement given to the Ukrinform News Agency in Kiev, according to ITAR-Tass. The Demjanjuk case must not be used to stir up anti-Ukrainian, or anti-Jewish, sentiment, he declared.

In theory, Demjanjuk could be tried and sentenced to death in Ukraine for war crimes, though some Ukrainian lawmakers expressed reluctance to retry a once-acquitted man under a Soviet-era law against Nazi collaborators.

It was not clear Tuesday what, if any, legal weight the ambassador’s statement would carry in Ukraine’s decision about whether to prosecute.

Times staff writer Sonni Efron in Moscow contributed to this story.