BERLIN
(AFP) — A German court on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant
for John Demjanjuk, 88, the alleged Nazi war criminal "Ivan the Terrible" suspected of killing thousands of Jews in World War II death camps.
The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk has lived in the United States since 1952 though
he has already been tried in Israel for war crimes.
"The accused is
currently still in the United States," a court official said in a statement released in Munich. "As soon as he arrives in Germany he will be questioned and tried."
Demjanjuk is now accused of
taking part in the deaths of at least 29,000 Jews when
he was a guard at the Sobibor Nazi concentration camp
in what is now Poland from March until September 1943,
the German prosecutor said in a statement.
The new German inquiry has
been carried out by the Central Investigation Centre
for Nazi Crimes.
Demjanjuk has been fighting
notoriety since 1977 when former inmates at the Treblinka
death camp identified Demjanjuk as "Ivan the Terrible" as part of a US Justice Department investigation.
He was extradited from the
United States to Israel in 1986 and a court there sentenced
him to death in 1988. He was released in August 1993
when the case collapsed after statements by former guards
assembled by the Soviet KGB identified another man, Ivan
Marchenko, as being "Ivan the Terrible".
Demjanjuk then returned to
Cleveland, Ohio even though his US nationality had been
taken from him for lying about his wartime activities.
He has lived under near house arrest since his return
and faced other investigations in the United States.
The case against him was revived
in 1999 after new evidence emerged that he had worked
as a guard at three other Nazi death camps.
US investigators brought together
witness accounts which described how Demjanjuk was seen
at Sobibor, kicking Jews or hitting them with his rifle
butt to get them out of railway wagons more quickly.
Demjanjuk is still on a Simon
Wiesenthal Center list of the most wanted Nazi war criminals
still alive.
"My reaction is
one of great joy and satisfaction and a sense that we
are hopefully on the way to seeing justice being achieved
in this very difficult and complex case," said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem.
"Every victim of
the Holocaust deserves that an effort be made to find
and bring to justice those who turned them into victims," he said, adding: "There is no doubt that he's a Nazi war criminal."
A German justice ministry
spokesman told a press conference that Germany now has
two ways to pursue the case.
"Either Demjanjuk
is expelled by the United States, he arrives in Germany
and the arrest warrant is carried out," or an extradition request is made.
On Friday, Demjanjuk's wife
Vera told the Bild daily that the couple "now only wanted to die in peace."
She said her husband "had
already been condemned so often. He was on death row
in Israel for six years."
Demjanjuk, who changed his
first name from Ivan to John after emigrating to the
United States in the 1950s, had moved to Cleveland, Ohio
after the war to work as an auto mechanic.
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