The Justice Ministry in Berlin is slated to ask the US to
extradite Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk, 88, who is
suspected of taking part in the mass murder of Jews while
serving as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.
"German authorities are convinced they have enough evidence
to convict Demjanjuk of murder. If we weren't certain he can
be convicted we wouldn't ask for his extradition," said Kurt
Schrimm, a top German prosecutor who specializes in Holocaust
crimes.
Two of his aides went to Washington to conduct an
investigation and after examining Demjanjuk's legal file they
were convinced there's enough evidence to secure a
conviction. Schrimm noted Demjanjuk is expected to be
classified as a ranking Nazi official and that he hopes to
conduct the trial before all of the witnesses pass away.
Schrimm was unwilling to describe the new evidence in his
possession or reveal the number of victims Demjanjuk
allegedly murdered.
Germany can only hold Demjanjuk on trial for murder, the only
World War II-era crime for which the statute of limitations
has not elapsed.
In 1986 the Ukraine native was extradited from the US to
Israel on suspicions he was Ivan the Terrible, a guard at the
Treblinka death camp known for sadistically tormenting and
killing Jewish children.
Demjanjuk claims he was in the Soviet army and was captured
by the Germans in 1942.
He was sentenced to death in Israel, but the High Court
acquitted him based on reasonable doubt as to the
identification of him as Ivan the Terrible. It noted that he
was apparently guilty of other war crimes but they were not
the subject of the trial.
The US recently decided to strip him of his US citizenship,
but he cannot be deported until another country seeks to
extradite him. The options are Israel, based on the Nazi and
Nazi Collaborators Law (5710-1950), the Ukraine, where he
argues he would be mistreated, Poland, where the crimes were
perpetrated, or Germany, in whose service he committed the
crimes.
According to Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
there are allegations from a fellow guard that Demjanjuk
played "an active part in the mass murder of Jews deported to
the Sobibor death camp" and Demjanjuk remains second on the
Center's most-wanted list of Nazi war criminals.
