CLEVELAND — The government has asked a judge to stick with a decision denying convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk a chance to regain his U.S. citizenship, arguing that the retired autoworker is just trying to drag out the case.
Demjanjuk’s appeal for reconsideration "rehashes old arguments" and "is nothing more than an effort to prolong this litigation by any means necessary," the government said in a filing Thursday night in U.S. District Court.
Demjanjuk, 91, who lived for many years in Seven Hills in suburban Cleveland, was convicted by a German court on more than 28,000 counts of accessory to murder. The court found he had worked as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
He claims the government failed to disclose evidence including a 1985 secret FBI report uncovered by The Associated Press. The document indicated the FBI believed a Nazi ID card purportedly showing that he served as a death camp guard was a Soviet-made fake.
Dennis Terez, Demjanjuk’s attorney, said in an email Friday that he wouldn’t comment on the government filing.
Last month, Judge Dan Aaron Polster ruled against the citizenship bid and said Demjanjuk had lied about his whereabouts during World War II.
In a response to the original defense citizenship filing, the government included a recent affidavit from retired FBI agent Thomas Martin. He said the March 4, 1985 report written by him was based on speculation about a Soviet forgery, not any investigation.
Demjanjuk has been in poor health for years and has been in and out of a German hospital since his conviction.
Demjanjuk cannot leave Germany because he has no passport after being stripped of his U.S. citizenship ahead of his deportation to Germany in 2009. He could have gotten a U.S. passport if the denaturalization ruling had been overturned.
The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was a Soviet Red Army soldier captured by the Germans in 1942.
