Demjanjuk loses appeal to avoid war crimes trial in Germany

John Demjanjuk, who allegedly aided in the murder of 29,000 Jews at a German-run death camp in Poland, was denied an emergency appeal by a Supreme Court justice Thursday, all but clearing the way for him to be sent to Germany to stand trial for war crimes.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who handles emergency appeals from Ohio, denied Demjanjuk’s appeal without comment. His lawyer could ask another justice to intervene, but the result is not likely to change.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was a Soviet soldier who was captured by the Germans during World War II and then allegedly volunteered to work in the Sobibor death camp.

Lawyers for Demjanjuk argued that the chronically ill 89-year-old retired autoworker would suffer “severe pain and suffering” akin to torture if he was flown from Cleveland to Munich. As their legal basis for the claim, they cited the Convention Against Torture. The treaty forbids the United States from returning a person to another country where he would be “in danger of being subjected to torture.”

U.S. officials dismissed the claim as frivolous. They referred to Demjanjuk as “a Nazi persecutor” who “grasps for a last straw to delay this matter further so that he can continue to enjoy his life in America until his dying day.” Demjanjuk’s lawyers said their client had multiple ailments, including a spinal condition, that made travel extremely painful.

The legal battle over his medical condition was fought with dueling videos.

In one, cited by his family, Demjanjuk is shown with his head back and mouth agape, gasping for air and moaning in pain, as he is carried out of his home in April. He was returned home hours later after an appeals court in Cincinnati agreed to consider an emergency appeal.

Secretly recorded videos later showed him walking slowly from his car into a store. He then returned and, with some help, got back into the car.

Last Friday, after reviewing evidence of his medical condition, the appeals court agreed that Demjanjuk could be deported. The U.S. government “will transport [him in] an aircraft equipped as a medical air ambulance,” the judges said.

The government’s legal battle with Demjanjuk has stretched over 32 years. The Justice Department moved to revoke his citizenship in 1977, saying he lied when he entered this country by concealing his role as a guard at Nazi death camps.

In 1986, he was sent to Israel, tried, convicted and sentenced to death for being “Ivan the Terrible,” a notoriously cruel guard who ran the gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp, also in Poland. But evidence from Soviet files indicated that another man, Ivan Marchenko, was Ivan the Terrible. Demjanjuk’s conviction was overturned in 1993, and he returned to the United States.

In 2001, authorities charged him with having been a guard at Sobibor, and another round of deportation proceedings began.

Though he has lost his appeals in this country, his lawyers are also seeking an order in Germany that would block his deportation to that country.

Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, refused to say how quickly the government would move to deport Demjanjuk if his final legal appeal was denied.

“We will continue to work with the government of Germany to effect the removal of Mr. Demjanjuk,” she said.

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david.savage@latimes.com