A dispute over the testimony of a defense witness in the trial of suspected war criminal John Demjanjuk forced a three-week suspension of the trial Wednesday. It will resume on Dec. 14.
William Flynn, a forensics expert hired by Demjanjuk’s supporters in the United States, was excused from giving further testimony after he told the court his sponsors threatened to sue him for breach of contract if he continued on the stand.
The threat was made apparently because the court on Tuesday rejected an exhibit prepared by Flynn to show that a key document which could prove Demjanjuk was the brutal guard at the Treblinka death camp, known as “Ivan the Terrible,” could have been forged.
Flynn displayed in court a photo montage and a deliberately forged document which he presented as proof that an identification card allegedly issued to Demjanjuk by the SS at Trawniki, a training camp for concentration camp guards, could also have been forged. The prosecution obtained the card from the Soviet Union and maintains it is authentic.
Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born former automobile worker from Cleveland, Ohio, claims he was a German prisoner of war at the time he is alleged to have been in Treblinka. The defense alleges that the ID card was forged by the Soviets in order to incriminate the suspect because of his Ukrainian nationalist activities.
When the court rejected Flynn’s efforts to prove this, the defense asked the three-judge panel to disregard all of his testimony.
But the court accepted the prosecution’s request that his testimony be kept on the record and that Flynn by subjected to cross-examination. When prosecuting attorney Michael Shaked began his questioning, Flynn asked to be excused.
The court said it suspected Edward Nishik, head of the fund-raising efforts for Demjanjuk’s defense, of trying to interfere with the case by influencing the testimony of a witness. A police investigation was ordered.
Demjanjuk himself was not in court. He remained in his cell at Ramle prison suffering from back injuries he claimed he sustained during the rough ride to court in a police van two weeks ago.
Another development in the trial was reported from Amsterdam Thursday. Willem Wagenaar, a professor in experimental psychology at the University of Leyden, who had testified as an expert witness for the defense, called a news conference on his return from Jerusalem at which he was highly critical of the way Demjanjuk’s trial was being conducted.
Wagenaar, who specializes in the function of memory, accused the Israeli authorities of having conducted their investigation of Demjanjuk “very carelessly,” He contended that the method used to identify photographs of the accused “was dishonest.”
According to Wagenaar, prosecution witnesses were given a description of Demjanjuk as a man with “a round face and a bull neck” before they were shown a series of photographs from which they were supposed to pick out the suspect. Only one of the photos fitted the description.
Wagenaar also charged that potential witnesses who claimed that the Treblinka guard known as “Ivan the Terrible” is long dead were not heard by the court.
According to the professor, it will be impossible for the Israelis to prove Demjanjuk is the war criminal they claim he is.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
