The trial of accused war criminal John Demjanjuk began its fifth week Monday after the three-judge panel rejected a defense motion to disqualify itself for bias against the defendant and his lawyers.
The allegation of bias was made by Yoram Sheftel, the Israeli lawyer assisting Demjanjuk’s American attorney, Mark O’Connor. Sheftel cited instances of what he claimed were discrimination against the defense, personal attacks on him from the bench and a lack of objectivity.
After a two-hour recess, court president Dov Levin declared there was no basis to Sheftel’s charges. He said the bench had not “intervened more than necessary” during the trial and in fact behaved “with more than usual forbearance.”
The court also rejected Sheftel’s demand that the hearings be suspended while the defense appealed the issue to the Supreme Court. Demjanjuk’s attorneys may appeal nevertheless.
Most of the proceedings Monday were devoted to O’Connor’s cross-examination of former police investigator Martin Koller, himself a Holocaust survivor who lost his entire family. Koller was questioned closely on the process by which photographs were presented to witnesses to identify the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk as the sadistic Treblinka death camp guard known as “Ivan the Terrible.”
Koller, who immigrated to Israel from Czechoslovakia in 1965, testified that he was employed by U.S. occupation forces in Europe after the war investigation Nazi war crimes.
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