Alleged Nazi guard loses US citizenship

A US federal judge has revoked the citizenship of a Ukrainian immigrant who allegedly served as a guard in a Nazi death camp during World War Two.

John Demjanjuk, 81, had argued that he was a prisoner of war.

But, eight months after the trial, Judge Paul Matia ruled there was enough evidence to prove that he had served as a guard in a camp.

It was the US Justice Department’s second attempt to strip John Demjanjuk – known as Ivan in his homeland – of his citizenship.

‘Mistaken identity’

The Justice Department’s case focused on documents that included references to a man with the same birth date, birth place and physical description, including a scar matching Mr Demjanjuk’s.

The defence, however, argued that it was a case of mistaken identity and that he may have been confused with a cousin called Ivan Demjanjuk.

It said that without the testimony of any live witness who saw John Demjanjuk commit any of the charged acts the trial would just be just a “trial by document”.

But in his ruling, the judge said the documents presented by the prosecution provided “convincing and unequivocal evidence”.

Conviction quashed

Mr Demjanjuk, who gained entry into the United States in 1951 claiming he had spent much of the war as a German prisoner captured in the Crimea from the Soviet army, was first charged with war crimes in 1977.

He first lost his citizenship in 1981, after a court ruled that he had lied about his wartime past.

Mr Demjanjuk, it was said, had worked at the Treblinka concentration camp, in Poland, where he was known as “Ivan the Terrible”.

On losing his citizenship, he was extradited to Israel, where he was tried and sentenced to death in 1988.

But his conviction was quashed five years later by the Israeli Supreme Court, after evidence suggested that another Ukrainian was Ivan the Terrible.

Mr Demjanjuk returned to the United States, where judges reprimanded the Justice Department and restored his citizenship.

Appeal

The latest case did not include allegations of him being a Treblinka guard, but named three other death camps.

Mr Demjanjuk’s family said they would appeal.

“It is true that judges have ruled against us in the past and public opinion has been against us in the past,” Mr Demjanjuk’s son-in-law and spokesman, Ed Nishnic, said.

“Nevertheless, we have proven them wrong before and have been vindicated. We will appeal and will prove them wrong once again.”

German Nazi jailed at 83

An 83-year-old man who was a Nazi SS commander in World War II has been jailed by a German court for 12 years for murdering Jews in the final months of the war.

Julius Viel was convicted of murdering seven Jewish prisoners at a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

Viel, who had denied the charges, sat impassively as the verdict was read out. He is thought to be one of the last Nazis likely to stand trial.

The judge in Ravensburg district court said he had acted “out of lust for murder and base motives”, and not on orders.

His lawyer said he would appeal, as evidence presented to the court had been contradictory. His legal team had told the court he was stationed in Vienna at the time of the murders.

“I’m sorry for my wife’s sake,” Viel told journalists after the hearing.

Viel, who worked as a journalist after the war, was a second lieutenant in the SS at the time of the crimes.

The Jewish people who died were inmates at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, killed in the spring of 1945.

They were digging anti-tank trenches at Leitmeritz, near the camp, when they were killed.

Viel had been investigated for the murders in the 1960s, but the case was closed after a lack of evidence.

But the case was reopened when a former Nazi trainee, Hungarian-born Adalbert Lallier, decided to break half a century of silence to reveal that he had witnessed the killings.

Mr Lallier, an economics professor in Canada, told the court in Ravensburg that Viel had shot the victims in cold blood.

He was the only person to give evidence, but the German judge said he had believed his account.

“Lallier certainly did not imagine what happened,” said Judge Hermann Winkler.

He said Viel had escaped a life sentence because of the time which had elapsed since the crime.

But he said Viel’s exemplary life after the war – which included winning government acclaim for some of his work – did not reduce the enormity of his original crime.

“At the beginning of this life’s journey, there were seven deaths,” said Judge Winkler. “The killing of a human was a crime then as well. The defendant knows it wasn’t animals but people he did away with.”

Around 360 witnesses in Germany, Austria, Britain and Canada were interviewed in a two-year investigation into the case.

A number of other investigations into Nazi killings have been continuing, but most defendants are now considered too old or too ill to stand trial.

Former SS captain to stand trial on war crimes

A judge in the Northern Italian city of Turin has ruled that a former Nazi SS captain will have to stand trial there on war crimes charges next March. He’s accused of having ordered the murder of 15 Italians, whose bodies were then strung up in public in a Square in Milan in August, 1944. David Willey reports from Rome.

Former SS captain, Theodor Saevecke, is now 86 years old and he’s been located in Germany. Because of his great age, the prosecution says his extradition will not be requested and he will be tried in absentia.

But the murders which led to Saevecke’s indictment caused such grief during the Second World War that they cannot be justified as a military reprisal, the prosecution argues. The Nazi officer ordered the killings after a bomb attack on a German army bus by Italian parisans.

The main casualties, however, were six Italian pedestrians who happened to be passing by. Military prosecutor, Pier Paolo Rivello, said he’ll ask for a life sentence.

Although the murders had been committed in time of war, they were a fact of common crime. 15 Italians were ordered by Captain Saevecke to be taken from the San Vitore prison in Milan, where they were being held in custody, and shot by a firing squad in the Piazzale Loreto, in Milan.

Their bodies were then strung up by the German military as a warning against further acts of sabotage against Nazi troops. In the closing days of the war, in 1945, when the Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, his mistress, Clara Petacci, and other Fascist leaders were captured by partisans, their bodies were displayed to the public in the same Square, in memory of this atrocity.