reuters.com | 16Apr2009 | Andrew Stern
http://www.reuters.com:80/article/latestCrisis/idUSN16288096

US court seeks information on Demjanjuk deportation

(In 10th para, Board of Immigration Appeals, not Bureau)
* U.S. court demands doctor's report on Demjanjuk
* U.S. must explain transport plans for 89-year-old

[W.Z. Please notice that in the story below, there is no mention of the criminality of "rogue elements" within the Department of Justice (Office of Special Investigations); the ruling of Judge Gilbert Merritt of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that the OSI were guilty of prosecutorial misconduct constituting fraud on the court; that Mr. Demjanjuk's citizenship was restored; that a second denatualization trial was held in 2001 under Judge Paul Matia.]

CHICAGO, April 16, 2009 (Reuters) - A U.S. court on Thursday demanded a doctor's report on the health of suspected Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk and other information, delaying for at least a week his deportation to Germany for trial.

The appeals court, which ordered a halt to Demjanjuk's deportation on Tuesday just hours after he was carried from his home in a wheelchair by U.S. agents, asked the Justice Department to explain its plans to transport the 89-year-old retired auto worker.

The information must be provided by April 23, 2009 to the court in Cincinnati, Ohio, it said in a three-paragraph ruling.

After the court issued its emergency stay on Tuesday, Demjanjuk was returned to his home in suburban Cleveland.

Prosecutors in Munich, Germany, are prepared to put Demjanjuk on trial for helping put to death 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp in 1943.

The court said the government must inform the court of its plans for transporting Demjanjuk to Germany and provide the the doctor's report used to decide he is stable enough to travel.

Demjanjuk's family has argued he is very frail with numerous ailments and that the trip, arrest and trial would likely kill him and violate an international ban on torture.

"Both German and U.S. authorities have reviewed my father's lab results. Both have to date been stonewalling the results from the courts in Germany and the U.S.," son John Demjanjuk Jr. said in an e-mail message.

The court asked Demjanjuk's side to counter the Justice Department's argument that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction in the case, which has been ruled upon by federal courts and U.S. immigration courts.

The Board of Immigration Appeals most recently ruled against Demjanjuk's request to reopen the case on the torture grounds, according to his son.

The appeals court said it must decide jurisdictional questions raised by the government. Prosecutors said in an earlier filing that the court should not get involved and branded Demjanjuk's claim a "grotesque debasement of the word 'torture.'"

The court also demanded prosecutors address the four factors set forth in the court's stay -- Demjanjuk's likelihood of success in the courts, the chances of irreparable harm, harm to others, and the public interest.

In the latest phase of a three-decade legal saga, Demjanjuk is accused of being an accessory in 1943 killings at Sobibor death camp where over 200,000 people were murdered. He is alleged to have personally led Jews to the gas chambers at the camp located in Polish territory then occupied by Nazi Germany.

The Ukraine native was sentenced to death in Israel in 1988 as the sadistic guard "Ivan the Terrible" at Treblinka where 870,000 people died.

Israel's highest court later ruled he probably was not "Ivan" but Justice Department Nazi hunters reopened his case and he was stripped of his U.S. citizenship for having worked at three other camps and hiding that information when he emigrated in 1951.

Demjanjuk was originally scheduled to be deported on April 5, 2009 but won an 11th-hour stay, saying he had spinal problems, kidney failure and anemia, was very weak and needed help to stand up or move about.

(Editing by Bill Trott)