Demjanjuk tries again to avoid deportation

The deportation of alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk should be blocked because forcing the frail 89-year-old to go to Germany would amount to torture, his attorney said in a court filing Tuesday.

John Broadley, the attorney for the retired auto worker from Seven Hills in suburban Cleveland, asked the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va., to block his client’s deportation and reopen a U.S. case that has ordered Demjanjuk deported.

Germany officials wanted Demjanjuk in the country Monday. But a U.S. immigration judge Friday agreed to temporarily halt his removal from the United States, then revoked that decision Monday. The stay expires Wednesday.

Demjanjuk is accused in a German arrest warrant of 29,000 counts of acting as an accessory to murder at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. He has denied involvement in any deaths.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk came to the United States after World War II as a refugee.
In Germany, Demjanjuk would have a chance to respond to the allegations before a judge in Munich. German prosecutors are making their case based largely on evidence used in the United States to strip Demjanjuk of his citizenship in 2002.

In a three-page signed statement last week, Demjanjuk asked for asylum in the U.S. and said deporting him “will expose me to severe physical and mental pain that clearly amount to torture under any reasonable definition of the term.”