JURIST - Paper Chase: US Justice Department continues efforts to punish former Nazis

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday filed a complaint [PDF text; press release] in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington [official website], seeking to revoke the US citizenship of an alleged World War II Nazi militiaman. Peter Egner, 86, is accused of taking part in the killings of over 17,000 Serbs as a member of the Nazi-run Security Police and Security Service in German-occupied Belgrade. Egner became a US citizen in 1966 but failed to disclose his Nazi service on his citizenship application. The DOJ argued that he was ineligible for citizenship both because of his service and because he concealed that information on his application. JTA has more. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has local coverage.

The DOJ's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) [official website] handles cases aimed at denaturalizing or deporting former Nazis who participated in wartime persecutions. Last month, Third Circuit judges revoked [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] the US citizenship of Anton Geiser, an 83-year-old Pennsylvania resident who had served as an SS guard at two concentration camps before the US government mistakenly granted him a visa in 1956 and then citizenship in 1962. In 2002, a judge revoked the US citizenship [JURIST report] of former Nazi concentration camp guard and Ohio resident John Demjanjuk [JURIST news archive] after a judge found that World War II evidence showed he worked in the Nazi concentration camps. In 2006, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit refused to overturn [opinion, PDF] a lower court decision upholding the order revoking the citizenship of former Nazi guard Johann Leprich's [JURIST report].

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