Deportation proceedings against a 61-year-old Ukrainian-born auto worker stripped of his citizenship for lying about his war-time Nazi crimes are being delayed by legal maneuvers by his attorney, an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) official told the Jewish Telegraphic-Agency today in a telephone interview from Cleveland.
A.D. Moyer, INS district director in Cleveland, said the hunger strike John Demjanjuk started on July 19 was not very rigorous. Mayer said Demjanjuk, was jailed July 19 for failing to appear at a deportation hearing there originally set for July 12, was drinking fruit juices and milk and had actually gained weight–from 207 pounds when he was incarcerated to 209 now. Mayer said he had no idea as to why Demjanjuk had started his “hunger” strike.
Mayer also said no new date had been set for the deportation hearing for which the way was cleared legally when Demjanjuk had his citizenship revoked by Federal Judge Frank Battisti on June 23, 1981 after a five-month trial. Demjanjuk denied charges, some by surviving eye-witnesses, that he had tortured thousands of Jewish prisoners and herded them into gas chambers in concentration camps in occupied Poland.
Mayer said Demjanjuk’s attorney, John Martin, had applied for a temporary restraining order against the deportation proceedings and that the application had been denied. Martin then appealed the denial to the Federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
But, Mayer said, the appeals court did issue a stay of mandate on the order to proceed with the deportation proceedings. He said his office had asked the appeals court to vacate the stay. Pending action by the appeals court, deportation proceeding are in suspension, Mayer told the JTA.
The INS officer said the deportation proceeding will be held before Immigration Judge Adolph Angelilli and will essentially be a presentation of the evidence which led Judge Battisti to strip Demjanjuk of his citizenship for lying when he applied for natralization in 1958.
Mayer said that Demjanjuk would probably be ordered deported but that Martin could appeal such an order. He said such an appeal would be reviewable by the Board of Immigration Appeals Mayer also told the JTA that Martin might decide to appeal an adverse ruling to the Supreme Court, commenting that Martin had appealed every ruling to date against Demjanjuk.
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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.
