JURIST - Paper Chase: US Supreme Court will not hear deportation appeal of accused Nazi prison guard

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] denied certiorari Monday in Demjanjuk v. Mukasey [order, PDF; case docket], ending the appeals process of a deportation order for accused former Nazi concentration camp guard and Ohio resident John Demjanjuk [JURIST news archive]. Demjanjuk, twice stripped of his US citizenship, had argued that the immigration judge who ordered his deportation lacked the authority to do so. Demajanjuk was appealing a 2005 ruling [JURIST report] by then-US Chief Immigration Judge Michael Creppy ordering his deportation. Demjanjuk had previously lost an appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals [DOJ backgrounder]. The US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Demjanjuk's petition for review [PDF text] in January. Reuters has more.

Demjanjuk is suspected of being "Ivan the Terrible," an infamously brutal guard at Poland's Treblinka [PBS backgrounder] death camp during World War II. Demjanjuk has argued that the accusation is based on mistaken identity. The case dates back to 1977 [Cleveland Plain Dealer report], when the Justice Department originally asked for Demjanjuk's citizenship to be revoked. He was extradited to Israel and sentenced to death for war crimes, but the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1993 and he returned to the US. In 2002, Demjanjuk again lost his US citizenship [JURIST report] after a judge found that World War II evidence showed he worked in the Nazi concentration camps.

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