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Dear Ms. McLellan:

An article in the Nov 14/97 English edition of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz contains the following paragraph based on an interview of U.S. federal judge Gilbert Merritt:

"Today we know," says Merritt, "that they - the OSI, the prosecution in the case and the State Department - lied through their teeth.  Even then they knew without a doubt that Demjanjuk was not Ivan the Terrible, but they hid the information from us.  I am sorry that I did not have the information at the time.  If I did, we would never have ruled in favor of his extradition to Israel."  Merritt claims that what happened in his courtroom was "nothing short of a witch hunt.  In retrospect, it reminds me of the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts 300 years ago.  The prosecution, counseled by the OSI, presented documents and witnesses whose testimony was based on emotions and hysteria, but not hard evidence.  To my regret, we believed them.  This instance is a prime example of how justice can be distorted."

You can find the complete Ha'aretz article at

http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/show_katava.asp?id=7405&mador=5&datee=11/14/97

It continues to astonish me that the Canadian Justice Department appears to be aware neither of the OSI's distortion of justice in the John Demjanjuk case nor of the leading role played by Neal Sher within the OSI at the time of this distortion of justice.

Yours truly,

Lubomyr Prytulak