Accused Nazi guard's deportation appeal rejected

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Panel rejects deportation appeal of accused Nazi guard A man accused of being a Nazi death camp guard has lost an appeal fighting his deportation. John Demjanjuk, 86, of suburban Cleveland, was ordered deported in 2005 after the chief federal immigration judge determined he had served at several Nazi death camps during World War II. Demjanjuk has denied the allegation. He still has the right to appeal Thursday's ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Virginia. In its 20-page ruling, the board said facts established previously in courts identifying the Ukraine native as a Nazi guard "are conclusively established" and that there is no reason to believe there may be new information about his past in a Soviet KGB file, as his lawyer alleged. Demjanjuk, a former auto worker, was cleared in 1993 in Israel of being the notorious "Ivan the Terrible," a sadistic guard at the Treblinka concentration camp. The board reviewed legal briefs in Demjanjuk's case before dismissing the appeal, said Elaine Komis, spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review. "We are studying it," said John Broadley, Demjanjuk's lawyer. "But that's the conclusion they reached. What their reasoning is, we'll have to take a look at, and federal courts will have to look at it, too." Demjanjuk, who first lost his US citizenship in 1981, was stripped of his citizenship in 2002 for a second time when a federal district judge in Cleveland ruled that documents from World War II prove he was a Nazi guard at various Nazi death or forced labor camps.