BERLIN (JTA) -- Munich state prosecutors appealed a district
court's decision to release convicted Nazi war criminal
John Demjanjuk from prison pending his appeal.
Monday's appeal of Demjanjuk's release, following his conviction on war crimes
on May 12, also appealed the five-year sentence handed down
that day for being too lenient.
The prosecutors' reasons will be presented
in writing and only then released to the public, according
to a spokesperson for the Munich District II court, which
found Demjanjuk, 91, guilty as an accessory to nearly 28,000
murders in the Nazi death camp Sobibor in occupied Poland
in 1943.
Demjanjuk's main attorney, Ulrich
Busch, appealed the conviction immediately. It is likely
the appeals process will take more than a year, observers
have said.
Demjanjuk, who is stateless and has
no relatives in Germany, has been placed in a nursing home.
While Jewish leaders have decried
Demjanjuk's release from jail, a group of Dutch co-plaintiffs
said they found the entire court proceeding encouraging.
Their “respect for the court’s verdict
includes respect for the court’s decision to release Demjanjuk
until his appeals are decided and the guilty verdict is upheld,”
said a statement from their Cologne-based attorney, Cornelius
Nestler.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Court Judge
Dan Polster last week appointed a public defender to assist
Demjanjuk in reviving the U.S. denaturalization case against
him. The move follows the release by The Associated Press
of a 1985 FBI report challenging the authenticity of the
Nazi ID card that was the key evidence against him in the
German trial and in stripping him of his U.S. citizenship
for lying about his Nazi past in order to gain entry into
the United States.
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