Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 18, 1993 TAG: 9311180061
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CINCINNATI LENGTH: Medium
The government said it remained convinced the 73-year-old retired autoworker was a war criminal and would pursue his deportation.
Demjanjuk spent seven years in an Israeli prison while he challenged charges that he was "Ivan the Terrible," a guard who tortured and killed Jews at the Treblinka camp in Poland. He was sentenced to death in 1988, but Israel's Supreme Court overturned the conviction.
Wednesday, three judges of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Justice Department lawyers withheld information Demjanjuk could have used to fight extradition.
The ruling did not suggest whether the lawyers should be punished.
Judges Pierce Lively, Gilbert Merritt and Damon Keith concluded that prosecutorial misconduct in the Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations "constituted fraud on the court."
Justice Department spokesman John Russell said the department still intends "to effect Demjanjuk's prompt removal from the United States as soon as his legal status is resolved."
It could ask the 6th Circuit to reconsider the ruling or it could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wednesday's ruling contradicted findings of a review the court ordered earlier of the Justice Department's actions. U.S. District Judge Thomas Wiseman Jr. of Nashville, Tenn. concluded in June that government lawyers withheld evidence unintentionally.
The court was not bound by Wiseman's findings. It said the government should have disclosed:
Statements to Soviet authorities by two Treblinka guards, who identified Ivan Marchenko as Ivan of Treblinka. Demjanjuk had claimed Marchenko was the real Ivan. Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian native, contended he spent most of World War II as a German prisoner after being drafted into the Soviet army.
A list the Polish government gave of Ukrainian guards at Treblinka, which included Marchenko's, not Demjanjuk's, name.
Conflicting statements from a German guard who once identified Demjanjuk as Ivan from photographs but earlier had been unable to do so.
An August court order forbade the government from interfering with Demjanjuk's return to the United States. That order remains in effect. The new ruling could help his fight to stay in the United States and regain his citizenship, which was revoked in 1981.
Demjanjuk, who lives in suburban Cleveland, has admitted he lied when he entered the country in 1952, but said he did so because he feared being returned to the Soviet Union. He told immigration officials he was a Polish farmer.
by CNB