|
BERLIN (AP) — German authorities will seek the extradition of alleged former
Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk from the U.S. to prosecute
him on charges that he was involved in killing Jewish prisoners
at Sobibor, the country's top Holocaust crimes prosecutor
said Thursday.
Authorities are convinced there is enough evidence to charge the former autoworker
from suburban Cleveland with murder — the only World
War II-era crime on which the statute of limitations
has not elapsed in Germany, prosecutor Kurt Schrimm said.
"If we were not
convinced that the evidence would be enough then we wouldn't
go forward," Schrimm told The Associated Press. "We think that he can be convicted."
However, John Broadley, a
Washington lawyer who represents Demjanjuk, suggested
that his client may be too infirm to be transported to
Germany.
"I don't know what
the Germans have in mind and I haven't had a chance to
think it through," Broadley said. "I do know that Mr. Demjanjuk is 88 years old and he's in very poor physical condition.
He can't get up out of a chair by himself."
Demjanjuk contends that he
served in the Soviet Army, was captured by Germany in
1942 and became a prisoner of war.
Schrimm refused to provide
details of the evidence, other than to say that it was
related to his alleged activities as a guard at the Sobibor
death camp. He would not say how many killings Demjanjuk
is suspected of being involved in.
Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi
hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said there are
allegations from a fellow guard that Demjanjuk played "an active part in the mass murder of Jews deported to the Sobibor death camp."
"I very much welcome
the decision made by the German authorities to seek the
extradition of Demjanjuk and hope that it will be expedited
so that he can be prosecuted in Germany and punished
for his crimes," Zuroff said.
He noted that Demjanjuk is
No. 2 on the center's "most wanted" list of Nazi war criminals — below only the brutal SS doctor Aribert Heim, whose
whereabouts are unknown.
"The issue is that
he was involved in mass murder; for some of our suspects,
we have proof that they were responsible for individual
murders, but here we are talking about someone who participated
in the process that led to the annihilation of a quarter
million Jews" at Sobibor, Zuroff said.
A native of Ukraine, Demjanjuk
was extradited to Israel in 1986, when the U.S. Justice
Department believed he was the sadistic Nazi guard known
as Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka death camp.
The Israeli high court freed
him after receiving evidence another Ukrainian, not Demjanjuk,
was that Nazi guard.
Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship
was restored in 1998, but the Justice Department renewed
its case, saying he was another Nazi guard and could
be deported for falsifying information on his applications
when entering the U.S. in 1952 and to become a citizen
in 1958.
On May 19, the U.S. Supreme
Court chose not to consider Demjanjuk's appeal against
deportation, opening the doors for the Justice Department's
Office of Special Investigations, which oversees cases
against former Nazis, to start proceedings.
Still it was unclear which
country would take him — his native Ukraine, Poland,
where the Sobibor death camp was located, or Germany.
Even with Germany seeking
his extradition, the process may take some time.
Because the alleged crimes
were committed outside Germany by a non-German, there
is no German prosecutors' office that would automatically
have jurisdiction — so Schrimm's office has to petition
Germany's highest criminal court to have the case assigned.
He said he expects to have
the motion filed within the next two months; and once
the case is assigned, the local prosecutors could then
proceed with asking for extradition.
Despite that, Schrimm said
he still thought Demjanjuk could be brought to Germany
by the end of the year.
"Mr. Demjanjuk
is very old, so those involved are trying to do it quickly," he said.
Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk
Jr., said his father was being treated for an illness,
though he would not say what.
"He's not in good
health right now," he said.
ap.google.com
|
