I'm a convinced supporter of pursuing (former) Nazies, but based on what is made public, I'm dead against this man's extradition. Above is a newsflash from the BBC regarding the most recent developments.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7998925.stm wrote:
An 89-year-old man wanted in Germany on war crimes charges has been given an 11th hour reprieve, shortly after being seized by US agents.
A US federal appeals court granted John Demjanjuk a stay of deportation after his family argued that he was too ill to be transported.
Before the stay was granted, officers detained Mr Demjanjuk at his home in Ohio, carrying him out in a wheelchair.
He is accused of being a guard at the Nazi death camp Sobibor in WWII.
It is not yet clear whether Mr Demjanjuk will be returned to his home following the stay of deportation.
Mr Demjanjuk denies the charges, claiming that he was captured by the Germans in his native Ukraine during the war and kept as a prisoner of war.
Israeli trial
He arrived in the US in 1952 as a refugee, settling in Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked in the automobile industry.
In 1988, Mr Demjanjuk was sentenced to death in Israel for crimes against humanity after Holocaust survivors identified him as the notorious "Ivan the Terrible", a guard at the Treblinka death camp.
Israel's highest court later overturned his sentence and freed him, after newly unearthed documents from the former Soviet Union indicated that "Ivan the Terrible" had probably been a different man.
Mr Demjanjuk returned to the US, but in 2002 had his US citizenship stripped because of his failure to disclose his work at Nazi camps when he first arrived as a refugee.
In 2005, a US immigration judge ruled that he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine.
Germany issued a warrant for his arrest last month, and his family have been fighting to prevent him from being deported ever since.
DEMJANJUK CASE TIMELINE
1952: Gains entry into the US, claiming he spent most of the war as a German prisoner
1977: First charged with war crimes, accused of being "Ivan the Terrible"
1981: Stripped of US citizenship
1986: Extradited to Israel
1993: Israeli Supreme Court overturns conviction, ruling that he is not Ivan the Terrible
2002: Loses US citizenship after a judge said there was proof he worked at Nazi camps
2005: A judge rules in favour of deportation to his native Ukraine
2009: Germany issues an arrest warrant for him; US immigration agents seize him at his home
While I don't consider one's health to be an issue when facing extradition on the basis of such serious crimes, I do consider it an issue when there is reasonable doubt the respective crimes were comitted by the person in question. In my opinion the US should not extradite Demjanjuk unless his identity is securely established. That does not count the belief of several persons or even one or two nations.
As of yet, this does not seem to be the case. I can't see why the US or the Germans even dare to prosecute a man whom the Israelis did not found proven guilty.
