reuters.com | 16Apr2009 | Andrew Stern
http://www.reuters.com:80/article/latestCrisis/idUSN16288096
US court seeks information on
Demjanjuk deportation
(In 10th para, Board of Immigration Appeals, not Bureau)
* U.S. court demands doctor's report on Demjanjuk
* U.S. must explain transport plans for 89-year-old
[W.Z. Please
notice that in the story below, there is no mention of the criminality
of "rogue elements" within the Department of Justice (Office of Special
Investigations); the ruling of Judge Gilbert Merritt of the Sixth
Circuit Court of Appeals that the OSI were guilty of prosecutorial
misconduct constituting fraud on the court; that Mr. Demjanjuk's
citizenship was restored; that a second denatualization trial was held
in 2001 under Judge Paul Matia.]
CHICAGO, April 16, 2009
(Reuters) - A U.S. court on Thursday demanded a doctor's
report on the health of suspected Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk
and other information, delaying for at least a week his deportation to
Germany for trial.
The appeals court, which ordered a halt to Demjanjuk's deportation on
Tuesday just hours after he was carried from his home in a wheelchair
by U.S. agents, asked the Justice Department to explain its plans to
transport the 89-year-old retired auto worker.
The information must be provided by April 23, 2009 to the court in
Cincinnati, Ohio, it said in a three-paragraph ruling.
After the court issued its emergency stay on Tuesday, Demjanjuk was
returned to his home in suburban Cleveland.
Prosecutors in Munich, Germany, are prepared to put Demjanjuk on trial
for helping put to death 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp in 1943.
The court said the government must inform the court of its plans for
transporting Demjanjuk to Germany and provide the the doctor's report
used to decide he is stable enough to travel.
Demjanjuk's family has argued he is very frail with numerous ailments
and that the trip, arrest and trial would likely kill him and violate
an international ban on torture.
"Both German and U.S. authorities have reviewed my father's lab
results. Both have to date been stonewalling the results from the
courts in Germany and the U.S.," son John Demjanjuk Jr. said in an
e-mail message.
The court asked Demjanjuk's side to counter the Justice Department's
argument that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction in the case, which
has been ruled upon by federal courts and U.S. immigration courts.
The Board of Immigration Appeals most recently ruled against
Demjanjuk's request to reopen the case on the torture grounds,
according to his son.
The appeals court said it must decide jurisdictional questions raised
by the government. Prosecutors said in an earlier filing that the court
should not get involved and branded Demjanjuk's claim a "grotesque
debasement of the word 'torture.'"
The court also demanded prosecutors address the four factors set forth
in the court's stay -- Demjanjuk's likelihood of success in the courts,
the chances of irreparable harm, harm to others, and the public
interest.
In the latest phase of a three-decade legal saga, Demjanjuk is accused
of being an accessory in 1943 killings at Sobibor death camp where over
200,000 people were murdered. He is alleged to have personally led Jews
to the gas chambers at the camp located in Polish territory then
occupied by Nazi Germany.
The Ukraine native was sentenced to death in Israel in 1988 as the
sadistic guard "Ivan the Terrible" at Treblinka where 870,000 people
died.
Israel's highest court later ruled he probably was not "Ivan" but
Justice Department Nazi hunters reopened his case and he was stripped
of his U.S. citizenship for having worked at three other camps and
hiding that information when he emigrated in 1951.
Demjanjuk was originally scheduled to be deported on April 5, 2009 but won an
11th-hour stay, saying he had spinal problems, kidney failure and
anemia, was very weak and needed help to stand up or move about.
(Editing by Bill Trott)