US dismisses 'Nazi guard' appeal

Mr Demjanjuk says he was a prisoner of war

A man who is accused of being an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews in a Nazi camp has lost his latest appeal against deportation from the US.

Lawyers for John Demjanjuk, 89, argued he could not travel to face trial in Germany because of ill-health.

But an immigration appeals board has rejected their arguments, paving the way for his deportation.

Mr Demjanjuk, who denies any part in the killings, has been living in Cleveland, Ohio, for many years.

In March, Germany issued an arrest warrant for the former car plant worker over the deaths of thousands of Jews at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.

German authorities had initially expected him in the country earlier this month.

But Mr Demjanjuk, who moved to the US in 1952, successfully appealed for an emergency stay of deportation.

That stay was quickly overturned, sparking his latest appeal.

And it is thought he will also appeal against the immigration board's latest decision.

Numerous allegations

Mr Demjanjuk says he was a prisoner of war of the Nazis rather than a prison guard.

Allegations of involvement in war crimes have dogged the Ukraine-born Mr Demjanjuk for years.

In the 1980s he was convicted in an Israeli court of being the notorious guard known as Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka camp, and sentenced to death.

That conviction was eventually overturned and he was allowed back into the US.

But in 2002 a US immigration judge ruled that there was enough evidence to prove Mr Demjanjuk had been a guard at several other Nazi death camps and stripped him of his citizenship.

German authorities now say they have new evidence linking him to the crimes of which he has been accused.