Demjanjuk Will Be Deported On Sunday

Germany Will Try Alleged Nazi Guard On Murder Charges

BERLIN, April 2 -- An accused Nazi concentration camp guard living in Ohio will be deported Sunday to stand trial on murder charges in Munich, according to the German Justice Ministry.

John Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine who emigrated to the United States in 1952, is scheduled to arrive in Munich on a commercial flight Monday morning, said Guenther Maull, a defense lawyer representing him in Germany.

After a long investigation, a Munich court issued an arrest warrant last month for Demjanjuk, considered by Nazi hunters to be one of their most important remaining targets from World War II. He is wanted on 29,000 counts of accessory to murder for his actions as a prison guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.

Demjanjuk, who turns 89 on Friday, will be imprisoned immediately in Munich and will undergo medical examinations to determine whether he is fit to stand trial, Maull said. He said Demjanjuk suffers from early-stage leukemia, kidney problems and rheumatism.

"He's an old man, a very sick and old man," Maull said in a telephone interview.

Demjanjuk's family has said he is too frail to make the trip to Germany, let alone endure a lengthy murder trial. But the U.S. Justice Department turned down a request to allow him to remain in the United States on humanitarian grounds, his lawyer said. Demjanjuk will be accompanied on the flight to Munich by a doctor, a nurse and a U.S. law enforcement official, Maull said.

Ulrich Staudigl, a spokesman for the German Justice Ministry, confirmed Demjanjuk's pending deportation. Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment.

U.S. officials, who lack jurisdiction to try Demjanjuk on crimes dating to World War II, stripped him of his U.S. citizenship years ago and have been trying to kick him out of the country. But no other country was willing to take him until Munich authorities issued their arrest warrant last month.

Demjanjuk has eluded efforts to prosecute him before. In 1986, the United States extradited him to Israel, where he was sentenced to death on charges that he had been a guard known as Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka concentration camp. But he was freed on appeal in 1993 after evidence emerged that prosecutors had confused him with another Ukrainian guard.