In the wake of an appeals court decision this week overturning the 1985 extradition of John Demjanjuk, some Jewish officials here are protesting insinuations by the court that the Justice Department bowed to pressure from Jewish interests.
In its ruling Wednesday on the Demjanjuk case, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati said attorneys from the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which is responsible for prosecuting suspected Nazi war criminals, worked very closely with “various interest groups.”
“It is obvious from the record that the prevailing mind-set at OSI was that the office must try to please and maintain very close relationships with various interest groups because their continued existence depended on it,” the decision said.
The decision also mentioned that Allan-Ryan Jr., who was then the head of OSI, had gone to Israel in 1986 on a lecture tour sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League.
The appeals court ruled that Justice Department prosecutors had committed fraud by withholding evidence while obtaining Demjanjuk’s extradition order to Israel. Demjanjuk was later tried and acquitted in Israel of being the Nazi death camp guard “Ivan the Terrible.”
ADL National Chairman Melvin Salberg and National Director Abraham Foxman responded angrily Wednesday to the decision.
“It is absolutely mind-boggling for the court to impugn OSI’s integrity by suggesting that their handling of the case was tainted in any way by a ‘mind-set’ of needing ‘ to please and maintain very close relationships’ with groups like the Anti-Defamation League,” Salberg and Foxman said in a statement.
“We stand foursquare behind the OSI,” they said.
ADL has communicated with the Justice Department to express the group’s outrage over the court’s suggestions, as well as to urge the department to take prompt action to get Demjanjuk out of the United States.
The American Jewish Committee is also upset by the court’s ruling.
“The panel’s opinion was, in a world, offensive,” Samuel Rabinove, AJCommittee’s legal director, said Thursday.
“We say the suggestion that the deportation of Nazi war criminals” is “solely a concern of ‘interest groups’ rather than a policy that stands on its own moral weight is repugnant,” Rabinove said.
AJCommittee is calling on Attorney General Janet Reno to deport Demjanjuk.
Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) contacted Reno on Wednesday urging her to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
Schumer said in a statement Wednesday, “After reading the court decision I’m infuriated at what is as close to blatant anti-Semitism as I’ve ever seen in a legal opinion.”
“The court doesn’t understand that the Office of Special Investigations that tracks down war criminals exists because there are Nazis in American, not because there are Jews in American,” Schumer said.
Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), who also has been outspoken on the Demjanjuk issue, likewise released a statement criticizing the decision and its “allegations” about OSI.
At a news conference Thursday, Reno repeated a statement she made the day before that the Justice Department was reviewing the appeals court decision.
She also reiterated that the department intended “to effect Demjanjuk’s prompt removal from the United States as soon as we determine his legal status.”
Actions of the controversial Justice Department unit have already been the subject of government and court reviews.
The attorney general said that the entire department is currently being reviewed to see how efficiently it functions, and that the department wants to try to comply with the “highest ethical standards.”
Appellate Judge Pierce Lively wrote Wednesday’s decision, and was joined by Judges Gilbert Merritt and Damon Keith.
The judges said the Justice Department’s actions contrasted negatively with the behavior of Israeli prosecutors.
“The ‘win at any cost’ attitude displayed by some of these record documents and statements contrasts sharply with the attitudes and actions of the Israeli prosecutors, who were under domestic political pressures themselves,” the decision said.
“But for the action of the Israeli prosecutors, the death sentence against Demjanjuk probably would have been carried out by now.
“He would have been executed on a charge for which he has now been acquitted,” the decision said.
After his acquittal in Israel earlier this year, the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, 73, was allowed to return to Ohio for legal proceedings.
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.
