'Ivan the Terrible' avoids prosecution in Munich

Original article: http://www.ejpress.org/article/32284

27/Nov/2008

BERLIN (AFP)---Germany's top Nazi-hunter said he would pursue a quest to have alleged former death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible" tried after prosecutors declined to bring charges.

Prosecutors in Munich said they had no jurisdiction because Ivan Demjanjuk was not living in the southern German city before he emigrated in 1952, Kurt Schrimm, director of the Central Investigation Centre for Nazi Crimes, told AFP.

Instead Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, whom Schrimm wants tried for his role in the murder of 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland in 1943, was in Ludwigsburg and in Bremen before leaving for the United States.

Schrimm said, however, that Demjanjuk lived in a small town near Munich and was only in Ludwigsburg to get a visa for the United States and in Bremen while he waited to get a ticket on a ship to escape on.

Demjanjuk, who changed his first name to John after emigrating to the United States in the 1950s, was extradited to Israel in 1986 and sentenced to death two years later.

The conviction was overturned for lack of evidence by Israel's Supreme Court in 1993 and Demjanjuk then returned to the United States where he was stripped of US citizenship for having lied about his wartime activities.

Schrimm said he had already sent the relevant files to the German Federal Court of Justice for it to decide where the 88-year-old could be tried. He said this would take "several weeks or several months."