Demjanjuk appeals deportation order

Appeal claims Demjanjuk faces torture if he returns to the Ukraine.

demjanjuk 88 (photo credit: )
demjanjuk 88
(photo credit: )
An 85-year-old retired autoworker who lost his US citizenship based on evidence he was a Nazi death camp guard asked an immigration board to reverse a judge's order that he be deported. Chief Immigration Judge Michael Creppy ruled Dec. 28 that there was no evidence to document John Demjanjuk's claim that he would be tortured if deported to his home country of Ukraine. The judge ruled that Demjanjuk should be deported to Germany or Poland if Ukraine does not accept him. Demjanjuk's appeal filed Monday sticks to the argument that he faces torture in Ukraine and that the case should have been handed to a judge responsible for Cleveland. Creppy is based in Falls Church, Virginia, as is the Board of Immigration Appeals. Demjanjuk, who came to the United States in 1952, was cleared in 1993 in Israel of being Ivan the Terrible, a sadistic guard at the Treblinka concentration camp. He had faced a death sentence in Israel until new evidence emerged that someone else was the notorious Ivan. He lost his US citizenship for a second time after a judge ruled in 2002 that documents from World War II prove he was a Nazi guard at various death or forced labor camps.