WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Justice Department released surveillance videos which it says show that a Nazi war criminal is healthy enough to be deported.
Lawyers for John Demjanjuk, 89, have claimed that because of his condition, transporting their client to Germany would constitute torture. They won an emergency stay of deportation last week when Demjanjuk was on the way to the airport.
But a video shows Demjanjuk walking and getting into a car without much trouble, and an affidavit from an immigration agent says that he moved with no more difficulty than any other man of his age, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
In Germany, Demjanjuk would face trial as an accessory in the deaths of some 29,000 Jews.
Demjanjuk was accused in the early 1980s of being the notorious Treblinka death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible," but he was released from jail in Israel after seven years after he could not be identified as "Ivan" beyond a reasonable doubt.
The U.S. Justice Department later reported that Demjanjuk had been a guard at Sobibor and was liable for deportation because he lied about his Nazi past to obtain U.S. citizenship.
American courts subsequently stripped him of his citizenship because he had lied about being a death camp guard. He and his family have appealed those orders for years.
