It’s ironic.
In the end it’s the Germans who will make the deportation of accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk a reality. Demjanjuk’s case has been in and out of the headlines for the past 30 years, ever since the US Department of Justice began its efforts to strip him of his US citizenship and deport him in the 1970s. The world has changed dramatically since then. The Soviet Union no longer exists, Ukraine, his native country, is now independent, and the rest of eastern Europe has largely joined the free world. But somehow Demjanjuk, albeit with one detour to Israel to stand trial for crimes against humanity, has managed to remain in his comfortable suburban Cleveland home with his family. Last year, after decades of litigation at all levels of the US judicial system, the US Supreme Court refused to hear Demjanjuk’s deportation appeal, effectively putting its stamp of approval on the government’s decision to expel him from the US.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgBPNRmogxM]But there was a problem. Ukraine refused to accept him. Nor would any other country. Since Demjanjuk had nowhere to go, it looked like he would quietly live out his final years in the US as an “unremovable alien”.
Enter Germany. A prosecutor in Munich has indicted Demjanjuk for 29,000 counts of murder based on his alleged service at the Sobibor Death Camp in Poland during the Holocaust and sought his extradition. The media initially reported that Germany faced a daunting extradition battle which could take months, if not years, further delaying the removal of Demjanjuk who turns 89 today.
But extradition is not necessary. Since the U.S. holds a valid deportation order Germany need only issue “travel documents” to the US indicating they will accept him as a deportee, a routine procedure in most deportation cases. Those documents were issued a few days ago and Mr. Demjanjuk’s removal is now scheduled for Sunday, April 5. His lawyers have filed an emergency request to stay his deportation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement claiming he is too frail and weak to travel to Germany.
His alleged poor health is certainly a pity. But personally I am much more moved by the frailty, weakness, and suffering of the innocent Jews who were gassed and burned in the death camps at which Demjanjuk allegedly served.
While identifying with the congressional mandate given to the Department of Justice’s Nazi hunting unit known as the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), I take exception with its extrajudicial methods.
Several years ago, the attorney representing John Demjanjuk consulted with a D.C. based immigration law firm seeking information regarding his remaining legal options. It was then that he was introduced, to the what is known as Withholding of Removal pursuant to the Convention Against Torture. At the time Demjanjuk faced deportation, either to the Ukraine, and/or Poland.
This writer was asked to locate, and we did, a nationally known and respected, country-specific expert who was both familiar with and could authoritatively quantify, both the integrity of the Ukrainian judicial system and prison conditions for detainees. Based upon the immutable factors presenting in the Demjanjuk case, was he more likely than not to be tortured, either by the government, or with its acquiescence following completion of a trial for his alleged Nazi collaboration and war crimes during World War 2.
Our expert was a U.S. based, internationally known and respected country expert on the Ukraine, then in the employ of a U.S. intelligence funded institute mandated to train, among others, FBI, DHS, CIA, NSA, State Department, and other federal employees on post-cold war intelligence agency services, training, objectives, operations, and methods, including those of the former Soviet Republics. Born, raised and educated in Ukraine, our expert had been trained as a KGB agent, together with Vladimir Putin (one year ahead of him), and subsequently stationed at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C.
We arranged for our expert to meet with representatives of the law office whom Demjanjuk’s attorney was consulting. They, in turn, provided him access to and the opportunity to examine the content of approximately forty (40) archive boxes filled with documentation which the OSI had gathered on him over several decades, but later attempted to destroy by tossing them into the McDonalds dumpster just across the street from their D.C. office, rather than surrender them to Demjanjuk’s attorney pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, or the U.S. courts. Neal Sher, then director of OSI had concluded that, what we don’t have, we don’t have to surrender, either to Demjanjuk, or the courts. It was a decision for which he and his colleagues were later condemned by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, resulting in his abrupt resignation in disgrace.
Tipped off regarding the scheme to destroy exculpatory evidence, the Demjanjuk family was notified of its whereabouts and eventually retrieved what our expert later examined. The documents revealed, among other things, that Demjanjuk was not where OSI had been claiming to have been, or to have done any of what it had claimed, during WWII. Moreover, reference was made to a five hundred (500) page Soviet era dossier on Demjanjuk still held in Eastern European intelligence service archives, a copy of which OSI had never sought from those in possession of it, if only for purposes of review and consideration, either regarding the appropriateness of their assessment of the facts which they had asserted for decades against him, or to be used, where warranted, as further evidence against him. It is apparent that some of what OSI intended to suppress and destroy was more than suggestive of the fact that what ever the Soviets had gathered on him was more likely to undermine, rather that support as supplement, the merits of their case against him.
When presented an advantage, its helpful that the recipient have the wherewithal to use it to their advantage. Unfortunately, Demjanjuk’s attorney is, neither an immigration attorney, nor experienced in preparing and defending an effective Withholding of Removal based claim, facts which the Demjanjuk family are aware of, but inclined to overlook due to his long term attachment to the case, albeit unsuccessful at every level, and `reasonableness of his legal fees.’ After examining the record and considering the myriad of mistakes and missteps by Demjanjuk attorney it was concluded that he was incompetent, something approaching a text book case warranting a complaint of ineffective assistance of counsel.
(1) Demjanjuk’s counsel failed to recommend, seek, or accept when offered, the assistance of a nationally known and respected, country expert with claim-relevant expertise who had the means to access and obtain the Demjanjuk’s Soviet dossier. The same dossier which OSI expressed reluctance in obtaining, a high profile item albeit compact in size, too significant an item to misplace in the dumpster across the street should its content prove inconvenient for their purposes. However, after learning of the expert’s Eastern intelligence connections, both his attorney and family rejected the offer of assistance in obtaining the dossier.
It should be understood that they were presented with an individual who personally knew, had access to, and maintained professional contact with those still stationed at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, as well as others in the employ of Ukraine and Russian intelligence services who had oversight of and direct access to the same intelligence archives containing the Demjanjuk dossier. In point of fact, our expert had facilitated a cooperative, professional working relationship between post-cold war eastern European and U.S. intelligence services in a global campaign designed to thwart Eastern European based mafia money laundering operations which continue to target Western banks.
The existence of anti-Western cold war era propaganda operations initiated by Soviet intelligence services against, both the Jewish, U.S. based Ukrainian and other Eastern European émigré communities designed to create tension between them are widely known and not in dispute. By depicting the U.S. as a willing recipient, safe haven, and repository for those who had once collaborated with the Nazis, advocated, facilitated, and murdered millions of their fellow countrymen during the war, Soviet propagandists fomented additional suspicion and hostility toward the U.S.
Familiar with the Ukrainian judicial system and prison conditions, our expert warned that following repatriation to his native Ukraine, Demjanjuk was certain be the focus of a show trial on charges of collaboration and war crimes for propaganda purposes and provided adequate, if not comfortable accommodations separate from the general prison population. However, following conclusion of his trial, when reporters had left, cameras in tow, there was no doubt that he would be tortured and killed, either by, or with the acquiescence of Ukrainian prison employees. Of this he was absolutely certain.
(2) Albeit the 500 page dossier is known to exist, Demjanjuk’s attorneys failed to make, either its existence as referenced in the OSI documents retrieved from the dumpster, or OSI’s failure to seek and obtain it, an issue in his defense. But the Demjanjuk family was more impressed with his long term interest in the case and reasonableness of his professional fees, than his competence, a price which Demjanjuk continues to pay for.
In one significant regard, the Demjanjuk’s case is not unique. This author is aware of other cases filed by OSI, wherein unconscionable liberties were taken, both with the facts and evidence. While they had the right individual, portions of the histories attributed to them were inaccurate. And then there were the multitude of cases not filed against individuals in spite of the existence of overwhelming evidence of their collaboration as high ranking government officials in Nazi puppet governments at the ministerial level, supplemented by those not pursued resultant from nothing more than petty, childish, inter-personal feuds between current and former OSI employees where it was determined that the prosecut
ion of some nationalities located in certain towns would give credence and draw attention to the publications of former employees who had long since separated from OSI and publicized, not merely what they had been uncovered, but what they were told to keep their mouths shut about.
If nothing else, the record in the Demjanjuk case illuminates the profound absence of intellectual honesty, both on the part of some within OSI, a number of whom have since paid for it, and the courts, more inclined to take short cuts, not a slave to objectivity, and even less inclined to be swayed, either by empirically based evidence, or influenced by the equitable weighing of it in discerning truth and achieving a just outcome. And then there is something to be said regarding one’s choice of counsel and their competency. If not merely a casualty of Soviet era anti-western propaganda, or malicious prosecution by the OSI, Demjanjuk has been for decades and continues to be a victim of a grossly inept, headline seeking attorney.
Signed,
Anonymous, but well informed.
Lisa, I really have a lot of pity for this old mass murderer… at the end 29000 killings is not so important…
shame on you…
How much time and money are we going to waste to continue torturing an 89-year-old man? And evidence? All we know–or can prove– is that he was a soldier on the bad side of the war.
First he was Ivan the Terrible. Oops, okay, we were wrong. THen he was a guard at a death camp. Well, we think he was. we’re not sure about that ID card, are we? Okay, then, let’s just hang him with 29,000 deaths that occurred at a camp during a time it appears he could have served there. Does it matter that there is no evidence he was guilty of anything? Please.
If you really want to stop ethnic cleansing, do something about it now. The Sudan has plenty of needs at the moment. Tell me, how is torturing an 89-year-old man to his grave going to prevent future holocausts? Stop looking for revenge and do something positive.