Berlin
- John Demjanjuk attends most sessions of his trial in a
hospital bed set up in the courtroom, wearing dark sunglasses
and a hat pulled down over his face.
The case of the retired Ohio autoworker accused of serving as a Nazi death camp
guard - which resumes next week after a month-long break
- broke potentially precedent-setting ground when it opened
last year.
But it has become increasingly
dominated by the 90-year-old defendant's failing health.
Nazi hunters have taken keen interest
in the Demjanjuk saga because it's the first time German
authorities have prosecuted such a low-ranking suspect
on the premise that, even without evidence of a specific
crime, simply working at a death camp was enough to be
an accessory to murder.
German prosecutors have since
opened investigations of two others on a similar basis,
both men who were called as witnesses at the Demjanjuk
trial - and a conviction could open the way to scores of
more such cases.
However, such questions have become
secondary to the endless health complications of the man
accused of having served in occupied Poland's Sobibor death
camp.
Bone marrow disease
Demjanjuk suffers from bone marrow
disease and other medical problems, and nearly a dozen
out of a scheduled 57 court dates have been cancelled so
far for health reasons.
The health issues have slowed
the proceedings to a crawl as the judges struggle to balance
Demjanjuk's needs with its schedule of evidence and witnesses.
Hearings were originally scheduled
through May, then extended into December, and now most
observers don't anticipate a verdict before well into 2011.
"If Demjanjuk is well
enough, I expect more dates until Easter - I do not expect
an end of the trial before that," said Stefan Schuenemann, who represents two Sobibor survivors as co-plaintiffs
in the trial, as allowed under German law.
Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk stood
trial in Israel in the 1980s on charges he was the notoriously
brutal guard "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka extermination camp.
He was convicted, sentenced to
death and then freed when an Israeli court overturned the
ruling saying the evidence showed he was the victim of
mistaken identity.
Accessory to the murder of 28
060
Demjanjuk was deported from the
US in 2009 to stand trial in Germany, charged with being
an accessory to the murders of 28 060 people at Sobibor.
He again argues he is being mistaken
for someone else, and denies having served as a guard for
the Nazis anywhere.
His attorneys have argued he was
one of Hitler's victims himself: first wounded as a Soviet
soldier fighting German forces, then captured and held
as a prisoner of war under brutal conditions.
Even if the judges find there
is enough proof that Demjanjuk was at Sobibor, they still
have to accept the prosecution's argument that being present
at the camp was akin to participation in the Holocaust
- no matter what his job was.
"There must be a limit," Schuenemann
said, explaining the difficulties the prosecution faces. "How near must you be to the killing? You pushed Jews into the gas chambers or
you just guarded the fence? These are questions that have
to be answered in the trial and it's not easy ... where
does responsibility start?"
In court, Demjanjuk has never
shown any reaction to testimony - although he speaks with
his attorneys and translator during breaks.
Nine blood transfusions
His son, John Demjanjuk Jr. points
to the fact that he has needed nine blood transfusions
since coming to Germany last May as treatment for dangerously
low haemoglobin levels.
"He is under constant
medical care and while he is willing, he is unable to follow
the proceedings and is no more fit for trial than 99% of
the Germans currently living out their last days in nursing
homes," he said.
But Barbara Stockinger, a spokesperson
for prosecutors in Munich, dismissed concerns that the
trial might soon be unable to continue.
"I am no doctor...
but there is always a doctor present and he has said that
he is fit for trial," she said.
At one point in July, Judge Ralph
Alt ordered Demjanjuk into court, saying that prison doctors
had determined he was fit but that he was refusing to attend
because he had "no interest".
The defence contests that, saying
Demjanjuk was legitimately ill, and filed a motion during
the summer break, which has not yet been ruled upon, asking
for Alt's removal from the case.
Defendants in their eighties
Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter
at the Wiesenthal Centre, said health issues come up in
most prosecutions now - more than 65 years after the end
of World War II with even the youngest defendants now in
their eighties.
He said it takes a "moral
resolve" to continue with them.
"It's too easy to walk
away from this," he said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.
"I think so far the
judges and prosecution have not given in and rightfully
so. The doctors say he can continue, he has to continue."
Demjanjuk is accused of serving
as a "Wachmann" or guard at Sobibor, subordinate to German SS men.
Demjanjuk's family questions why
his has emerged as the test case - and has suggested that
trying a Ukrainian helps deflect blame from Germany.
"It is shockingly wrong
for the Germans to have ignored bringing their own people
to trial for so many years and to now break new legal ground
against a 90 year-old ill man who himself was a POW victim
of the Germans," Demjanjuk Jr. told The Associated Press in an e-mail.
Some never pursued
The trial has already served to
refocus the attention of prosecutors on two men who have
lived in Germany for years, but were never pursued.
In July, prosecutors charged 89-year-old
Samuel Kunz, an ethnic German, of accessory to the murder
of 430 000 Jews while he was allegedly a guard at the Belzec
death camp, and with 10 counts of murder for unspecified "personal excesses".
Kunz was supposed to testify at
the Demjanjuk trial but then backed down after learning
he was under investigation himself.
Prosecutors are also investigating
the case of another Ukrainian, Alex Nagorny, who testified
as a witness at the trial.
They are currently trying to determine
whether he is the same person as a Nagorny implicated by
witnesses as a guard who took part in killing people in
Treblinka.
Since the Demjanjuk trial started,
two other elderly suspects under investigation have died
before their cases could be brought to court.
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