ticklethewire.com
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.
