Death camp guard Demjanjuk fails in new legal challenge

Berlin — Former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk has failed in his attempt to get Germany’s top court to declare his deportation from the United States in May illegal, the court said on Wednesday.

Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, 89, lost a months-long battle to avoid deportation to Germany where he faces charges of assisting in the killing of 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.

The Constitutional court said that Demjanjuk, who spent five years on death row in Israel before being acquitted on different charges in 1993, was unable to prove that his basic rights had been infringed in the deportation.

Courts in both Israel and the United States have previously stated he was a guard at Sobibor, accusations which the stateless Demjanjuk, who worked for years as an autoworker in Ohio, now challenges.

Last Friday he was declared healthy enough to stand trial.

AFP/Expatica