Accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk asked the US Supreme Court today to prevent his deportation to Germany, where he faces charges in the deaths of 29,000 Jews.
John Broadley, an attorney in Washington, D.C., who has been representing the 89-year-old retired Ohio autoworker, filed a 19-page request with the high court seeking a stay of deportation while he pursues Demjanjuk's legal appeals.
A US appeals court in Ohio cleared the way on May 1st for Demjanjuk's deportation, lifting a stay that halted his removal at the last minute two weeks earlier after US agents had taken him from his suburban Cleveland home in a wheelchair.
Prosecutors in Munich, Germany have issued an arrest warrant to put the Ukraine-born Demjanjuk on trial for assisting in the deaths of 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor extermination camp during the second World War.
The appeals court ruled that Broadley's argument that sending Demjanjuk to Germany amounted to torture was unlikely to succeed and lifted the stay that had prevented his deportation.
Broadley in seeking a stay of deportation from the Supreme Court said Demjanjuk suffered from "a number of physical ailments that present real and immediate risks to his life". The US justice department is expected to oppose the request.
Demjanjuk denies any role in the Holocaust and claims he was drafted into the Russian army in 1941, became a German prisoner of war a year later and served at German prison camps until 1944.
The request for the stay was filed with Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who could act on his own or refer it to the full court. A decision could come at any time.
Reuters