OSI opens new case against Demjanjuk (05/23/99)

OSI opens new case against Demjanjuk

by Stephen Vitvitsky

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations initiated a new case against John Demjanjuk on May 19, seeking to once again strip him of his U.S. citizenship. News of the new charges against Mr. Demjanjuk was reported by the Associated Press and Reuters.

More than 20 years ago the OSI began proceedings against Mr. Demjanjuk, accusing him of being "Ivan the Terrible" of the Treblinka death camp. After being denaturalized and extradited to Israel for a trial on war crimes and crimes against humanity, Mr. Demjanjuk was convicted, but the conviction was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court. The OSI now charges that Mr. Demjanjuk was a guard at several other Nazi camps.

The Justice Department's initial mishandling of this matter has been the topic of much criticism. A United States appellate court criticized OSI prosecutors for "reckless" withholding of evidence during the 11-year legal process in the U.S. that could have undermined their allegation that Mr. Demjanjuk was the infamous Nazi war criminal "Ivan the Terrible."

The new 15-page complaint alleges that Mr. Demjanjuk began working for the Nazis at the Trawniki training camp in 1942, where, according to the Office of Special Investigations, Eastern European recruits were prepared to aid the Nazi genocide. The lawsuit further alleges that Mr. Demjanjuk served as an armed guard at the Sobibor death camp, and the Majdanek and Flossenburg concentration camps.

Claiming that Mr. Demjanjuk lied about his wartime activities to obtain a visa to enter the United States in 1952, the Justice Department is appealing the decision of a federal court in February 1998 to reinstate Mr. Demjanjuk's citizenship.

Ed Nishnic, spokesman for Mr. Demjanjuk, stated, "We are deeply saddened by the government's latest filing. Twenty-two years ago the government came after Mr. Demjanjuk with alleged documentary evidence, six survivor eyewitnesses and two SS eyewitnesses - all swearing that he was Ivan the Terrible. Twenty-two years later, after a death penalty in Israel, it turned out that the government had committed fraud from the very beginning. We only hope it doesn't take another 22 years to prove the government wrong once again."

Regarding the evidence behind the new lawsuit, Mr. Nishnic said: "The 'new' allegations are nothing new. Most of the information was in the Justice Department's possession as far back as the late 1970s, but did not fit into the OSI's 'Ivan' theory. The other information was considered in Israel and, according to the attorney general in Israel, was not strong enough to warrant such a conviction, and they chose not to proceed with a case."

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