You're reading: Demjanjuk attorney: testimony raises doubts

MUNICH (AP) — John Demjanjuk's defense attorney says transcripts of testimony by a former guard at a Nazi death camp, who acknowledges that he was tortured by the Soviets into confessing to war crimes, show that all such confessions should be considered suspect.

In the transcript of the 1951 trial in the Soviet Union read Tuesday at the Munich state court, a former Red Army soldier captured by the Nazis, and who then served as a guard at Majdanek camp, said he confessed to killing Jews only after being beaten.

Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine who went on to become an American citizen, is standing trial on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder for allegedly having been a guard at a different death camp, Sobibor. He denies the charges.

Attorney Ulrich Busch says the transcripts indicate that other alleged confessions being used as evidence — including one placing Demjanjuk at Sobibor — shouldn’t be considered.