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Doctors will say this week if Demjanjuk fit to stand trial
By MARILYN H. KARFELD
Senior Staff Reporter
A medical report concluding whether or not former Seven Hills resident John Demjanjuk is healthy enough to stand trial in Munich for war crimes should be released this week, say German prosecutors. He is currently being held in a Munich prison.
Demjanjuk, who was stripped of his U.S. citizenship over seven years ago for lying on his naturalization documents about his service as a Nazi concentration camp guard, was deported to Germany in May. There, he faces accessory-to-murder charges that he helped herd 29,000 Jews into the gas chambers at Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland in 1943.
“We believe he should be fit to stand trial, within limits, at least,” Chief Prosecutor Anton Winkler told Reuters. This could include shorter court examinations than is typical for younger suspects. “Once the assessment is there, I think we’ll bring charges within two weeks – so at the moment that should be mid-July.” That could mean the trial would begin this fall, prosecutors have said.
Demjanjuk’s German attorney Guenther Maull told Reuters that he has yet to determine what “within limits” means. Maull has filed a complaint protesting Demjanjuk’s continued detention with the Munich High Court, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported; a lower court dismissed the complaint.
The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, who denies he was a Nazi guard, has battled in court for over 30 years about his wartime past. He insists he was a Soviet soldier captured by the Germans and spent most of the war in German POW camps.
Originally charged with being Ivan the Terrible, the brutal Treblinka gas chamber guard, Demjanjuk was denaturalized and extradited to Israel. In 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court released him, saying evidence available after the collapse of the Soviet Union showed someone else was the Treblinka guard.
Demjanjuk returned to the U.S. and his citizenship was restored. Later, the U.S. government filed new charges that he was a Nazi guard at other concentration and extermination camps. In 2002, a federal judge in Cleveland found that he was trained as an SS guard at Trawniki and served at Flossenburg, Majdanek and Sobibor camps.
Demjanjuk, who was stripped of his U.S. citizenship over seven years ago for lying on his naturalization documents about his service as a Nazi concentration camp guard, was deported to Germany in May. There, he faces accessory-to-murder charges that he helped herd 29,000 Jews into the gas chambers at Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland in 1943.
“We believe he should be fit to stand trial, within limits, at least,” Chief Prosecutor Anton Winkler told Reuters. This could include shorter court examinations than is typical for younger suspects. “Once the assessment is there, I think we’ll bring charges within two weeks – so at the moment that should be mid-July.” That could mean the trial would begin this fall, prosecutors have said.
Demjanjuk’s German attorney Guenther Maull told Reuters that he has yet to determine what “within limits” means. Maull has filed a complaint protesting Demjanjuk’s continued detention with the Munich High Court, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported; a lower court dismissed the complaint.
The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, who denies he was a Nazi guard, has battled in court for over 30 years about his wartime past. He insists he was a Soviet soldier captured by the Germans and spent most of the war in German POW camps.
Originally charged with being Ivan the Terrible, the brutal Treblinka gas chamber guard, Demjanjuk was denaturalized and extradited to Israel. In 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court released him, saying evidence available after the collapse of the Soviet Union showed someone else was the Treblinka guard.
Demjanjuk returned to the U.S. and his citizenship was restored. Later, the U.S. government filed new charges that he was a Nazi guard at other concentration and extermination camps. In 2002, a federal judge in Cleveland found that he was trained as an SS guard at Trawniki and served at Flossenburg, Majdanek and Sobibor camps.
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