Spain to try four alleged Nazi

Kyt · Jul 19, 2008

The Local - Spain to try four alleged Nazi war criminals

Spain’s National Court will try four men accused of working worked as guards at Nazi concentration camps in Austria and Germany where thousands of Spaniards died, Spanish media reported Friday.

The court said it would proceed with the lawsuit brought against the four men who live in the United States by Brussels-based rights organization, Equipo Nizkor, under Spain’s principle of “universal jurisdiction”, daily newspaper El Mundo reported on its website.

Under this principle, adopted by the Spanish judiciary in 2005, crimes against humanity, war crimes, terrorism and other heinous offences can be prosecuted in Spain even if they were committed abroad.

The lawsuit names John Demjanjuk, an 88-year-old who is also being sought by Germany, as well as Anton Tittjung, Josias Kumpf and Johann Leprich, as suspects.

It demands that the four men be extradited to Spain to stand trial for the deaths of Spanish citizens at camps at Flossenberg and Sachsenhausen in Germany, and Mauthausen in Austria where they allegedly worked as guards.

More than 7,000 Spaniards were held prisoner at the Mauthausen camp and over 4,300 of them died, El Mundo reported.

Spanish judges have invoked the principle of “universal jurisdiction” to prosecute figures such as Chilean right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet or generals from Argentina’s “dirty war” of the 1970s with limited success.

The hunt for Aribert Heim, the ageing concentration camp doctor who conducted inhumane experiments and torture on prisoners, seems to have heated up, with several alleged sightings of him in Argentina.

Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Efraim Zuroff, was in Buenos Aires at the end of the week, and told a press conference his researchers were getting close. He said Heim, the most wanted Nazi criminal still alive, was physically delicate but able to walk.
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Antipodean Andy · Mar 12, 2009

Germany has waded in now on one of the four.

Demjanjuk accused of helping to kill 29,000 Jews - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

A German court has issued an arrest warrant for John Demjanjuk, 88, the alleged Nazi war criminal "Ivan the Terrible", who is suspected of killing thousands of Jews in World War II death camps.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk has lived in the United States since 1952, although he has already been tried in Israel for war crimes.

"The accused is currently still in the United States," a court official said in a statement released in Munich. "As soon as he arrives in Germany he will be questioned and tried."

Demjanjuk is now accused of taking part in the deaths of at least 29,000 Jews when he was a guard at the Sobibor Nazi concentration camp in what is now Poland from March to September 1943, the German prosecutor said in a statement.

The new German inquiry has been carried out by the Central Investigation Centre for Nazi Crimes.

Demjanjuk has been fighting notoriety since 1977 when former inmates at the Treblinka death camp identified him as "Ivan the Terrible" during a US Justice Department investigation.

He was extradited from the United States to Israel in 1986 and a court there sentenced him to death in 1988.

He was released in August 1993 when the case collapsed after statements by former guards assembled by the Soviet KGB identified another man, Ivan Marchenko, as being "Ivan the Terrible".

Demjanjuk then returned to Cleveland, Ohio, even though his US nationality had been taken from him for lying about his wartime activities.

He has lived under near-house arrest since his return and faced other investigations in the United States.

The case against him was revived in 1999 after new evidence emerged that he had worked as a guard at three other Nazi death camps.

US investigators brought together witness accounts that described how Demjanjuk was seen at Sobibor, kicking Jews or hitting them with his rifle butt to get them out of railway wagons more quickly.

Demjanjuk is still on a Simon Wiesenthal Centre list of the most wanted Nazi war criminals still alive.

"My reaction is one of great joy and satisfaction and a sense that we are hopefully on the way to seeing justice being achieved in this very difficult and complex case," said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem.

"Every victim of the Holocaust deserves that an effort be made to find and bring to justice those who turned them into victims," he said. "There is no doubt that he's a Nazi war criminal."

On Friday, Demjanjuk's wife Vera told Germany's Bild newspaper that the couple "now only wanted to die in peace".

She said her husband "had already been condemned so often. He was on death row in Israel for six years".

Demjanjuk, who changed his first name from Ivan to John after emigrating to the United States in the 1950s, had moved to Cleveland after the war to work as a car mechanic.
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war hawk · Mar 12, 2009

I hope they catch these terrible people and punish them.I have no sympathy for them.

Antipodean Andy · Mar 19, 2009

Now it's Kumpf's turn.

US deports former Nazi camp guard | World Breaking News | News.com.au

A FORMER Nazi concentration camp guard who served at death camps in Poland, France and Germany, has been deported from the United States to Austria.
The US Justice Department said it deported Josias Kumpf, 83, who worked as an armed SS guard at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Germany and at the Trawniki Labour Camp in Poland.

Kumpf, who was born in Serbia, emigrated from Austria to America in 1956, acquired US citizenship in 1964, and settled in Racine, Wisconsin.

US officials said he took part in heinous acts during the Second World War that contributed to the death of thousands of civilians.

Prisoners under his watch at slave labour sites in Nazi-occupied France were forced to build launching platforms for German missile attacks on Britain.

While a guard at Trawniki, he participated in a November 3, 1943, mass shooting in which Jewish 8000 men, women and children were murdered in a single day.

Kumpf helped guard the prisoners - including approximately 400 children - who were shot and killed in pits at Trawniki. According to Kumpf, his assignment had been to shoot to kill any survivors.

"Josias Kumpf, by his own admission, stood guard with orders to shoot any surviving prisoners who attempted to escape an SS massacre that left thousands of Jews dead," Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita Glavin said.

"His court-ordered removal from the United States to Austria is another milestone in the government's long-running effort to ensure that individuals who participated in crimes against humanity do not find sanctuary in this country," she said.

The Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations - the US office tasked with locating and prosecuting or repatriating Nazi war criminals hiding out in the United States - has won cases against 107 individuals since it began operations in 1979, the office said.
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Heidi · Mar 20, 2009

There is believe an nazi to be living in Australia,not sure how high rank he is or weather he was just a nazi private.
It was aired on the *Today and Tonight* program. Actually he could have been in the British free crops units,still he's a nazi but not one of the high Nazi's generals.

It's believe, there is still alot of Nazi's generals in Argintina still hiding away plus i know for a fact there was one living in England.
There everywere !

Kyt · Apr 5, 2009

News - World: 'Ivan the Terrible' can stay in the US

Washington - A Nazi death camp guard accused of helping to kill 29 000 Jews during the Second World War has won the right to remain in the United States for now, an immigration judge has ruled.

A Virginia judge said late Friday that John Demjanjuk, 89, who faces expulsion to Germany on war crimes charges, can remain at his Ohio home while the case is further examined.

Demjanjuk's defense team has argued his imminent expulsion to Germany and near-certain arrest on arrival would constitute torture given his age.

"The court should state our motion to reopen the case at an indefinite date," his lawyer John Broadley said.

"In light of his deteriorating health and the German government's apparent intention to arrest him and put him in jail, the anguish and pain that he'll suffer from arrest and incarceration and trial in Germany will amount to torture under the convention against torture," Broadley said ahead of the ruling.

In a court filing the prosecution team described this allegations as "frivolous."

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk is one of the world's top Nazi war crimes suspects, wanted for his role at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Demjanjuk was ranked number two on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's 2008 "most wanted" Nazi criminal list, behind Aribert Heim, nicknamed "Doctor Death," who according to a recent investigation died in 1992.

While Demjanjuk's family continues to protest his innocence the US has sought to deport the former mechanic for lying about his past on immigration forms.

He was stripped of his US nationality in 2002.

German prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Demjanjuk in March, the latest in a series of legal wrangles over his fate.

He was sentenced to death in 1988 in an Israeli court, suspected of being the infamous and sadistic concentration camp guard "Ivan the Terrible." - AFP
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Antipodean Andy · Apr 21, 2009

Ex-Nazi guard taken from US home for deportation - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

A US court has granted former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk an 11th-hour stay of deportation shortly after he was taken from his Ohio home to be flown to Germany for trial.

Demjanjuk's son petitioned the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to consider whether deporting his 89-year-old father to Germany amounted to torture, because of what his family said is his frail health.

The move came after Demjanjuk was removed from his suburban Cleveland home in a wheelchair early this morning.

US prosecutors said the court lacked jurisdiction, which two appeals court judges said was an issue it needed to consider before lifting the stay.

Earlier five agents took the 89-year-old, accused of aiding the killings of at least 29,000 Jews in World War II, out of his home in a wheelchair, easing him down the steps as family members sobbed on the porch.

He was taken to a nearby white van and the local media reported he was being escorted to Burke Lakefront airport to be put on a Gulf Stream jet bound for Munich, southern Germany.

"He is to be here tomorrow," his Munich lawyer Guenther Maull told the Cleveland Plain Dealer by telephone.

It was the latest twist in a long saga which has seen Demjanjuk fight for decades against charges linked to his alleged role in the war.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk is accused of having voluntarily served the Nazis at the Sobibor and Majdanek concentration camps in Poland in 1943, and of aiding the killing of at least 29,000 Jews.

Former wartime inmates of Nazi camps in occupied Poland identified Demjanjuk as the brutal Ukrainian prison guard 'Ivan the Terrible' during a 1977 US Justice Department investigation.

Demjanjuk was sentenced to death by a court in Israel in 1988, but his conviction was overturned five years later by Israel's Supreme Court after statements from other former guards identified another man as the sadistic "Ivan."

He was returned to the United States despite strenuous objections from Holocaust survivors and Jewish groups.

Demjanjuk's lawyer has argued the octogenarian is in poor health, and that jailing and trying him in Germany would cause him pain amounting to torture. His family says he suffers from kidney disease and blood disorders, local US media reported.

Local Ohio channel 3 news said Demjanjuk had spoken to a priest to hear his confession just before he was taken away.

Demjanjuk changed his name from Ivan to John after emigrating to the United States in 1952.
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US court stays deportation of ex-Nazi guard - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

A US court has postponed the deportation of former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk for a week to give time for proof that the 89-year-old is fit enough to travel to Germany.

The court ordered that his deportation to Germany for trial on charges of aiding the deaths of at least 29,000 Jews in Polish concentration camps during World War II should be stayed until April 23.

It also called on the government to inform the court about its plans to transport Demjanjuk, who is said to suffer from a variety of illnesses.

The appeals court also demanded the state provide "the report of the doctor which forms the basis for its conclusion that the petitioner's medical condition is such that he is stable enough to travel safely".

Demjanjuk was granted an 11th-hour reprieve on Tuesday when the court granted his request for a stay of deportation shortly after he had been carried in a wheelchair out of his Ohio home to be taken to a waiting flight.
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Colonel Klink · May 13, 2009

Concentration camp guard to stand trial

89 yo concentration camp guard to stand trial!.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/world/europe/12germany.html

spidge · May 13, 2009

If he is guilty, age should have no bearing.

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