In a move seen by some as exerting undue pressure on internal Israeli affairs, a U.S. Embassy official in Tel Aviv sent a letter to the Israeli government strongly urging it to free acquitted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk.
According to sources at the World Jewish Congress, the letter, sent last week to the Israeli State Attorney’s Office, said the United States would require “an official and legal explanation” if Israel continued to detain Demjanjuk beyond Aug. 11.
The letter made it clear that any attempt to try Demjanjuk on new war crimes charges would violate the terms of his 1986 extradition from the United States.
Last month, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned Demjanjuk’s conviction as the notorious Treblinka death camp guard known as “Ivan the Terrible,” but said there was evidence he served as an SS guard at other concentration camps, including Sobibor.
Holocaust survivors and Jewish groups in Israel have filed eight separate court petitions urging that Demjanjuk be tried for crimes committed at those camps. But Israel’s attorney general, Yosef Harish, announced last week that the government would not do so.
Israel’s Supreme Court is expected to decide Wednesday whether to accept the government’s decision or whether to agree with the survivors that Demjanjuk should not be allowed to leave Israel until further prosecutions can be explored.
Here in Washington, the State Department confirmed last Friday that a letter urging Demjanjuk’s release was sent by Paul van Son, a first secretary at the American Embassy, to Ruth Rabin, an official in Israel’s Justice Ministry who deals with foreign relations.
Although State Department officials maintain that the letter was sent without the knowledge or approval of Secretary of State Warren Christopher, observers believe it may have had a crucial impact on the Israeli attorney general’s decision not to prosecute Demjanjuk on new charges.
CHRISTOPHER DISTANCES HIMSELF
Source at the World Jewish Congress — who received a copy of the letter from an Israeli Foreign Ministry official — said they felt it was a bald attempt to pressure Israel into releasing Demjanjuk.
Demjanjuk is now eligible to return to the United States, as a result of a ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati that is now being appealed by the Justice Department.
The letter reportedly said that State Department attorneys had expressed “concern that the government of Israel may be in violation” of terms under which Demjanjuk had been extradited from the United States.
Secretary of State Christopher, appearing on a televised CNN interview last week, distanced himself from the letter.
“It was nothing that I was involved in,” the secretary said.
The State Department, in a statement released last week, maintained that the letter was “prepared and sent without the knowledge or approval of officials in Washington.”
But, the statement continued, “the issues raised in this letter have been the subject of informal discussions between our governments for some time.”
The State Department statement said that “the letter was part of the embassy’s dialogue with the State Attorney’s Office and was designed to seek clarification of legal issues that both governments consider germane to the Demjanjuk proceedings.”
The Israeli Embassy here had no comment on the controversy.
(Contributing to this report was JTA correspondents Cynthia Mann in Jerusalem.)
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