John Demjanjuk/msnbc

Even in death, his legal battle continues.

The JTA News Service reports that attorneys for deceased Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk are trying to restore his U.S. citizenship. They’ve asked a U.S. appeals court to restore his status posthumously.

Demjanjuk, a former Cleveland area autoworker, died in Germany in March at age 91. He was free at the time appealing his conviction for participating in the murder of 27,900 people at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.

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John Demjanjuk

The decades-long legal case against accused Nazi John Demjanjuk won’t go away.

The Cleveland Jewish News is reporting that his defense attorneys on Tuesday filed a motion accusing the Justice Department of withholding evidence and fraud.

At the key of accusations is a 1985 FBI memo questioning the authenticity of a Nazi identity card issued to Demjanjuk, the paper reported. His lawyers say the memo could have helped exonerate him.

The motion asks U.S. District Court Judge Dan Aaron Polster to rescind the court order stripping the Ohio resident of his citizenship and deporting him, the Cleveland Jewish News reported.

Demjanjuk’s legal battle began in 1977 when the U.S. tried to deport him. He was accused of being a gas chamber guard — “Ivan the Terrible” — at the concentration camp, Treblinka.

He was deported to Israel where he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death, the Cleveland paper reported. In 1993, the Israel Supreme Court ordered Demjanjuk released because evidence indicated that another Ukrainian guard, Ivan Marchenko, was the Treblinka guard.

In 1999, he returned to the U.S. where he was charged with being a guard at other camps. He lost his citizenship for the second time and was deported to Germany in 2009 where he was recently convicted of war crimes.

The Jewish News reported that he’s been living in a Bavarian nursing home while awaiting his appeal.

John Demjanjuk/msnbc

John Demjanjuk, the suspected Nazi death camp guard,  was convicted in Munich on Thursday of helping force roughly 28,000 Jews to death during World War II, the New York Times reported.

The 91-year-old retired American autoworker was then sentenced to five years in prison, but was released pending his appeal. His lawyers insist he is innocent.

Authorities charged that Demjanjuk worked as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. The Times reported that he was sentenced to death in Israel in 1988, but five years later the conviction was overturned after it was decided it was a case of mistaken identity.

simon wiesenthal center

An FBI report is creating a major stir for the Ukranian-born John Demjanjuk, who is on trial in Germany for Nazi war crimes.

The Associated Press reported that a newly declassified FBI document from 1985 raises questions about the authenticity of a Nazi ID card that shows Demjanjuk, 90, served at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.  The ID is considered a key piece of evidence. Demjanjuk has denied the allegations of war crimes that center around murders at the camp.

The FBI report suggests the Soviets may have forged the ID.

AP reported that defense attorney Ulrich Busch gave the AP story on Tuesday to the judges in the Munich trial and said he wants them to suspend the trial to give him time to look into the matter. The judges made no immediate ruling.

The story shows “prosecutors did not introduce all the possibly exculpatory evidence from the United States here,” Busch told the court, according to AP.

Prosecutor Hans-Joachim Lutz told the court the card has been examined by several experts who insist it is genuine.

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Eli Rosenbaum/doj photo

WASHINGTON — Many of them are dead and gone. Some are elderly and sickly.

But Justice Department prosecutor Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, continues to hunt down the elderly Nazis in the U.S.

“We’ve sent a loud, clear message that the U.S. is not willing to be the sanctuary for perpetrators of crimes against humanity,’ Rosenbaum, 54, told Parade magazine.

Some like tv commentator Pat Buchanan have criticized the unit, calling it a group of “hair chested Nazi hunters” who have devoted time hunting old guards, Parade reported.

John Demjanjuk/msnbc

But Rosenbaum tells Parade:”If you’re guilty, you can reasonably expect to be pursued for the rest of your life.” Rosenbaum joined the unit after graduating from Harvard Law School in 1980. He left in the mid-1980s and returned in 1988 and became director in 1994, parade reported.

Some of the suspected Nazis he’s gone after have included John Demjanjuk, Andrija Artukovic and Helmut Oberlander, Parade reported.

The magazine reports that the unit has won denaturalization or deportation against 107 accused Nazis in the U.S. It said later this year the unit will merge with another human rights enforcement unit at Justice.

To read the full article click here.

As the last of the Nazis die off, this Justice Dept. unit is widening the net and widening the mission to focus more on war crimes beyond World War II.

John Demjanjuk/msnbc

The target of their rapt attention: onetime Nazi concentration-camp guard John Demjanjuk, 89, who had outlasted a generation of American lawyers vying to deport him from the United States for allegedly lying about his role in the Holocaust.

One attorney in the department’s elite Office of Special Investigations died of cancer, another perished in an airplane crash and others had retired from public service in the nearly three decades since the investigation began.

“Even as the plane took off, I thought, ‘Something’s going to happen,’ ” recalled OSI Director Eli Rosenbaum. “Because that was the case for so many years, where if something could go wrong, it did go wrong.”

For Full Story

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John Demjanjuk/msnbc

A new chapter begins in the tale of suspected Nazi John Demjanjuk after so many have already been written. Will prosecutors get it right this time?

By ROLAND LOSCH
Associated Press Writer
MUNICH — German prosecutors formally charged John Demjanjuk on Monday with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp during World War II.

The charges against the 89-year-old retired auto worker, who was deported from the U.S. in May, were filed at a Munich state court, prosecutors in the city said in a brief statement.

Doctors cleared the way for formal charges earlier this month, determining that Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN’-yuk) was fit to stand trial so long as court hearings do not exceed two 90-minute sessions per day.

The court must now decide whether to accept the charges – usually a formality – and set a date for the trial. Court spokeswoman Margarete Noetzel said the trial was unlikely to start before the autumn.

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John Demjanjuk/msnbc

This guy has had more detours than a California freeway under construction. The latest is that he’s supposed to be in Germany by Tuesday. We’ll see.

By M.R. Kropko
Associated Press
SEVEN HILLS, Ohio — Suspected Nazi guard John Demjanjuk is expected to be deported to Germany by Tuesday, a German Justice Ministry spokesman said as the retired autoworker remained inside his suburban Cleveland home.

Reporters gathered outside the home Monday morning in anticipation that he could turn himself over to U.S. immigration authorities.

“According to our current information, we anticipate that he will arrive in Germany tomorrow during the course of the day,” Justice Ministry spokesman Ulrich Staudigl told The Associated Press on Monday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials went to Demjanjuk’s home Friday to serve a government notice asking that he surrender. The move came one day after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Demjanjuk’s appeal to stop his deportation

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