reuters20110708KyivPost.html

German prosecutors drop Demjanjuk sentence appeal

BERLIN, July 8, 2011 (Reuters) - German prosecutors withdrew their appeal on Friday against a court decision to free convicted Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk. Munich prosecutors said the 91-year-old Demjanjuk no longer posed a flight risk since he is confined to a nursing home.

Ukraine-born Demjanjuk is stateless after being stripped of his U.S. citizenship before his extradition to Germany in 2009.

In May [12May2011] a Munich court convicted Demjanjuk of helping to kill more than 28,000 people at the Sobibor camp in German-occupied Poland during World War Two.

But prosecutors later filed an appeal against Demjanjuk's five-year prison sentence and his immediate release from jail, which the court said was because of his advanced age.

Prosecutors had initially demanded a six-year sentence.

Demjanjuk's lawyers have also appealed his guilty verdict but it will take at least a year to go through the required legal procedures.

Demjanjuk, who was once top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals, said he was drafted into the Soviet army in 1941 and then taken prisoner by the Germans.

Demjanjuk was initially sentenced to death two decades ago [24Apr1988] in Israel for being the notorious "Ivan the Terrible" camp guard at Treblinka in Poland. The guilty verdict was overturned on appeal by Israel's supreme court in 1993 [29Jul1993] after new evidence emerged pointing to a case of mistaken identity.

Kyiv Post| 08Jul2011 | Associate Press
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/108294/

Demjanjuk to remain free pending appeal

BERLIN (AP) -- Munich prosecutors say they have dropped their objection to the court-ordered release of John Demjanjuk as he awaits the outcome of the appeal of his conviction on Nazi war crimes charges.

Spokeswoman Barbara Stockinger said Friday that Demjanjuk has been living in a Bavarian nursing home and shown no signs of being a danger to flee, so her office saw no chance of success for its appeal.

The 91-year-old retired autoworker was convicted May 12, 2011 of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder after a Munich court found he served as a guard at the Nazis' Sobibor death camp.

He was sentenced to five years in prison but was immediately released pending his appeal, which could take as long as two years, after the court ruled he was not a flight risk.

http://www.brandonsun.com/world/breaking-news/german-prosecutors-drop-objection-to-demjanjuk-remaining-free-pending-appeal.html
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