Demjanjuk Asks Supreme Court to Stop Deportation

FILE - In this file photo taken April 14, 2009 shows John Demjanjuk, second from right, taken from...

FILE - In this file photo taken April 14, 2009 shows John Demjanjuk, second from right, taken from his home in Seven Hills, Ohio by immigration agents. A lawyer for Demjanjuk said Tuesday, May 5, 2009, that he is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the deportation of the 89-year-old suburban Cleveland resident to Germany, where he faces 29,000 counts of accessory to murder. John Broadley said he sent the motion from Florida and expects it to be filed with the court Wednesday morning. Demjanjuk's family argues he is too sick and frail to be deported. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan, File)

(AP)

John Demjanjuk, branded by the U.S. government a Nazi death camp guard, on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to stop his deportation to Germany, where an arrest warrant accuses him of 29,000 counts of accessory to murder during World War II. A federal appeals court in Ohio has cleared the way for deporting him. The 89-year-old retired autoworker, his family and his lawyer say he's in poor health and too frail to be sent overseas.

The Supreme Court didn't say when or if it would rule. The appeal goes first to Justice John Paul Stevens, who can decide the request on his own or refer it to the full court.

The arrest warrant in Germany accuses Demjanjuk of being a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. Demjanjuk, a native Ukrainian, maintains he was a prisoner of war, not a camp guard. Evidence the U.S. government has used against him includes a Nazi document, an identification card placing him at a training camp and then at various death or forced-labor camps, including Sobibor.

A German court on Wednesday rejected an attempt to block his deportation, saying the issue would have to be decided by American courts.

The U.S. Department of Justice would "respond in court as appropriate," spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said Wednesday.

Demjanjuk remains in his home in the Cleveland suburb Seven Hills. On April 14, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers entered his home, placed him in a wheelchair and carried him outside to a waiting van.

He was taken to a holding area at immigration enforcement offices in Cleveland and was there a few hours until the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati granted an emergency stay. The court considered his case before ending that stay and refusing to issue another Friday.

Demjanjuk sought the Supreme Court's help last year, without success.

In 2005, the nation's chief U.S. immigration judge ruled Demjanjuk could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. Demjanjuk's lawyer appealed that ruling, arguing another immigration judge should have been assigned to the case. On May 19, 2008, the Supreme Court declined to hear that appeal.