Plane carrying Demjanjuk departs Cleveland airport

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

Source: AP

An airplane carrying suspected Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN'-yuk) has taken off from a Cleveland airport as U.S. officials deport him to Germany.

Burke Lakefront Airport Commissioner Khalid Bahhur (BAH'-her) confirmed that Demjanjuk was on board the flight that left just after 7 p.m. Monday and was headed for Germany.

Read more: http://my.freeze.com/storyhandler.aspx?category=36&story=296948&trafficsource=1003

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Good Riddance, Nazi scum!

[OhioChick]

1. This has been going on for so long now...

I can remember talk of deportation when I was a kid.

[IndianaGreen]

2. Yep, I watched the entire event on CNN webcast

Frakking nazi!

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. Good ........

He may be the last Nazi prosecuted.

Justice delayed is NOT justice denied.

Good riddance..............

[applegrove]

11. Yup.

[Ian David]

4. And yet Bush is still free. n/t

[MadMaddie]

9. It took over 50 years for this Nazi....

* and his cronies will be looking over their shoulder until the day they are arrested and prosecuted!

[Ian David]

23. But shouldn't we really be LOOKING FORWARD???

:sarcasm:

[LostinVA]

5. Hope he lives to be 130 years old

And every single day b.etween now and then is in prison

[IndianaGreen]

6. The Germans got a pretty airtight case against Demjanjuk

I posted a Spiegel article a month ago. He clearly was a guard at Sobibor.

[LostinVA]

8. Which was an actual DEATH camp

My grandmother was friendly with Esther Raab, who was one of the people who survived the mass escape.

[naaman fletcher]

10. could you please..

Find that article for me? I would be interested in it.

On another note, I was reading about this case and found something very, very interesting. Now, the history is that a US Prosecutor had been given the evidence that he was not, in fact, Ivan The Terrible, and did not disclose this exonerating evidence. She was rebuked by a Judge for that.

Fast forward to the Ted Stevens case. Stevens is almost surely guilty bet gets charges dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct, including not turning over evidence that might help exonerate Stevens.

Why is this interesting? Same lady who withheld evidence from Demjanjuk case was one of the prosecutors on Stevens case.

She should be disbarred.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

12. Where did you read that?

I'd like very much to see that.

Got a link? Or any reference?

Thanks.

[IndianaGreen]

22. Here are the Der Spiegel articles on the German charges against Dejamjuk

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1441396,00.jpg

The ID of the 89-year-old Demjanjuk: This and six other documents are now being used by German prosecutors in an effort to put Demjanjuk on trial for complicity in the deaths of 29,000 people.

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-40410-2.html


http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1510263,00.jpg

Demjanjuk's identity card from when he was a displaced person: Germany wants to put the suspected war criminal on trial.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,grossbild-1510263-622357,00.html

03/06/2009

THE CASE OF JOHN DEMJANJUK

Nazi Guard, Sick Old Man or Both?
By Cordula Meyer in Cleveland

German prosecutors believe that John Demjanjuk was a sadistic guard at the notorious death camp Sobibor. They would like to put him on trial in Munich, but his family says the 88 year old is too old and frail to be extradited -- and that he is innocent anyway.

<snip>

In 1993, though, the Israelis released him after it became clear that "Ivan the Terrible" was likely someone else. Demjanjuk was allowed to return to the US. Since then, though, more and more clues have surfaced indicating that Demjanjuk may actually have been a guard at the Sobibor death camp in present-day Poland. Prosecutors in Munich want him to stand trial in Germany. They allege that he took part in the murder of 29,000 people.

Demjanjuk is stateless. Last May, the US Supreme Court refused to hear his final appeal. Nothing now stands in the way of Demjanjuk's being extradited to Germany at any time to face the new charges.

Experts from the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation have just recently verified the validity of Demjanjuk's ID, which puts him in Sobibor during the period when the crimes took place. Their finding marks an important step in the effort to try him in Germany.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,611819,00.html

05/01/2009

ALLEGED WAR CRIMINAL FIGHTS DEPORTATION

Demjanjuk Sues German Government
By Cordula Meyer in Washington

The deportation case began in March when the Munich prosecutor's office issued a warrant for Demjanuk's arrest on charges of being an accessory to the murder of 29,000 people. This is the number of Jews who were killed during Demjanjuk's alleged time as a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp.

The case has since become a bitter legal battle with both the Demjanjuk family and the US authorities using images to back up their cases. The family released videos of Demjanjuk in terrible pain being examined by a doctor. The US Justice Department countered with secret video footage (all videos are available on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Web site) of the accused, showing him briskly walking from a clinic to a car and getting in without any assistance.

Deportation officers have given sworn affidavits that Demjanjuk had been bright and animated in their offices. The family has claimed that the authorities only filmed him when he looked in good health and that they never took images when he was being transported in a wheelchair even though they were present.

The US Justice Department is increasingly irritated by the wrangling. It argues that Demjanjuk is making a mockery of it and of justice, writing that "he is, quite obviously, a vigorous man, particularly for his age." The officials even use political arguments in their letter to the judges in Cincinnati. Demjanjuk, they write, "is seeking, in effect, to show the world that, even if the United States has the will to carry out statutorily mandated removal of one who helped carry out lethal Nazi crimes of persecution, our legal system is so full of loopholes and pitfalls that such an individual may succeed in obtaining the only thing he really wants -- to die in America."


http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,622357,00.html

[MineralMan]

7. Adios, MF...n/t

[TankLV]

13. good riddance to bad rubbish...he was lucky to have enjoyed his misearable life THIS long...

[jakefrep]

14. How many cracks do those incompetent bastards get at this guy?

They couldn't prove anything against the guy. Let him die already.

[roguevalley]

32. murder is forever, including prosecutions. he isn't going to die so

make his fucking life as miserable as his victims' lives were. no surrender.

[rug]

15. I guess you have to wait 64 years to arrest war criminals.

[eirteacher]

16. They should have taken Cheney

They should have taken Cheney with him they both love torture.

[8 track mind]

17. don't let the door hit you in the ass. POS nazi. n/t

[emilyg]

18. Finally. Thank God.

[Doremus]

19. Israel was SURE he was Ivan the Terrible.

They convicted him of it and sentenced him to death for it. He served 7 years in Israeli prisons for it.

Then it was revealed their "evidence" was all a sham.

For that reason I've been very skeptical of the case against him ever since. That, and the fact that practically every time the guy sat in court he had a new injury from "falling down" or other "accidents."

[oberliner]

26. It was the Israeli High Court that overturned that verdict

The evidence came from Holocaust survivors who had identified him (apparently incorrectly) as that individual.

The Israeli courts determined in 1993 that there was reasonable doubt as to whether he was actually that person.

[DeltaLitProf]

20. And like most cowards of his ilk

. . . he was probably screaming and hollering the whole trip.

[proteus_lives]

21. Burn in hell, you old bastard!

No mercy or leniency for Nazis. Not now, not ever!

[Hepburn]

24. Good-bye to Euro-trash....

...evil man.

JMHO

[AngryOldDem]

25. Good riddance.

The world has spent too much time dealing with this asshole.

[Xithras]

27. There's still a pretty good chance he'll never see prison.

Demjanjuk was a low level guard, and there are many people like him still living in Germany today who have either never been prosecuted, or who were given only token sentences. The Germans are usually only aggressive towards guards who can be directly linked to the deaths of individual prisoners.

As an example, there was a woman from San Francisco who was deported to Germany in 2006 after it was discovered that she was a guard at a womens slave-work camp. The US deported her to Germany, but the Germans declined to pursue the case against her because she couldn't be directly linked to any killings. She lives quietly in a small German village today.

The problem is that there are literally hundreds of thousands of people still living in Germany today who played minor roles in the Nazi atrocities, and tens of thousands who were involved with the death/slave camps in some way, who have never been brought to trial. Germany has prosecuted the worst of the worst, and still aggressively pursues anyone who directly killed someone or who held any kind of leadership role, but doesn't generally pursue lower level guards or staff. The charges against Demjanjuk today were filed under U.S. pressure, and there's a real question about whether he'll actually be asked to stand trial, and if he does, whether he'll receive any kind of real sentence (highly doubtful). Germans have a different perspective on prisons than we do...they don't imprison people to "punish" people, but to rehabilitate them. It's improbable that a judge will decide that an 89 year old man needs rehabilitation to protect society from his crimes, since he's lived 50+ years without committing any.

And even if he is convicted, this is a shot of real German prison cells: http://damncoolpics.blogspot.com/2009/05/german-prison-cells.html. As I said, the Germans have a different perspective on prison than we do. Anyone with visions of this guy rotting away in a cage should set them aside now.

[Blue_Tires]

28. shit...those look better than my first apartment

[Xithras]

29. Same here. If you're going to do a crime, do it in Germany.

I've seen the inside of a jail cell twice (typical youthful idiocy), and those are palaces compared to what I sat in.

Generally speaking, I prefer the German concept to an American one. Instead of simply "locking them up" to punish criminals, they work to better them so that the criminals have a shot at a better life. The Germans actually have documented proof that recidivism INCREASES as incarceration gets more authoritarian and punishment oriented. This has led to a liberalization of their justice system and the creation of a punishment architecture that emphasizes rehabilitation and punishments that don't include prison time. If the individual is serious enough to merit incarceration, the focus is still on counseling, rehabilitation, and training, and not on punishment or discomfort. German legislators want prisoners to leave jail better people than when they went in.

The odds of an 89 year old man spending anything beyond a token stay in a German prison are pretty much zero.

[happyslug]

30. Before you condemn him, put yourself in his shoes and decide you would NOT do what he did

Demenjuk was a Ukrainian serving in the Soviet Army. He was captured by the Germans who had a habit of starving Soviet POWs to death. Now it appears Demenjuk was captured AFTER the main starvation of Soviet prisoner, but the POW camps were not nice. Remember even US POWs had a rough time of it, and the camps that US troops were kept in meet Geneva Convention requirements, that can NOT be said of the Nazi POW camps for Soviet Prisoners.

Now, given that situation, the Germans went to these camps and offered anyone in them freedom of the camp if they agreed to join the German Army. Demenjuk seems to be one of these recruits, but he was NOT recruited into the German Army but the Nazi SS as a guard (Demenjuk claims he joined the German Army, but even the Israeli Supreme Court that set him free said he had been a Death Camp Guard). As a SS Guard at the Camp, he had NO authority over the camp or the prisoners, his job was to make sure no prisoner escaped. Demenjuk claims after a while he escaped from the Germans and stayed free while the Soviets took over Eastern Europe, he then migrated on his own to a Refugee Camp in Western Europe from where he immigrated into the US. The Israeli Supreme Court speculated he made his escaped during the Solibor escape (Or shortly thereafter, he claims he did so as the Soviets entered Poland in 1944), but given his low position as a camp guard it would be an injustice to try him for the same crime many Jews did at the same time (i.e. help run the Camps, either as internal police for the camp, or actually operating the mechanism to kill the people brought in to be killed, or removing the bodies to be burned or buried.

Now had the Israeli Supreme Court agreed that Demenjuk been Ivan the Terrible that would have been a different story, Ivan the Terrible not only did his job as a Guard, but made it a point to make the lives of the people in the Camp a living Hell. The problem was many of the same people who said he had been Ivan the Terrible had previously said another man had been Ivan, and he died during WWII (Through there is some question on this and Ivan the Terrible was NOT at Solibor, where Demenjuk is believed to have been stationed).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk

Now I know people dislike Jame Buchanan, but he does a good piece on why this latest prosecution is questionable one if you believe in the concept of Double Jeopardy, that prosecution should be punished for hiding evidence that helps the defense AND that people of greater guilt should be punished worse then people of lesser quilt:

http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-the-true-haters-1495

Other cites:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=441003&mesg_id=441026

The German Magazine Spiegel on Demenjuk, and the question on why going after non-Germans who "helped" the Nazis, when all Germans who helped the Nazis received an amnesty in 1969:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,618966,00.html

[CrawlingChaos]

31. This was the guy who fed the dogs?

If I'm not mistaken, his job was caring for the dogs at the camp where he was stationed.

Would you wish the same fate on the truck mechanics at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib?

The whole Ivan the Terrible thing turned out to be completely false -- why shouldn't we raise an eyebrow at these new charges? People get railroaded for political purposes all the time and I wish we could remember that.

Dick Cheney, John Yoo, David Addington ....while they walk freely among us I cannot get excited about the persecution of some old man in a wheelchair who was never anything more than a powerless pawn in the horrific events of his youth.

[roguevalley]

33. wait until the trial before you exonnerate the fucker. may he burn.

[Doremus]

34. I agree, CC.

This pervasive "fry him" attitude here is disappointing to say the least. Given that one court sentenced him to death based on bogus evidence I'd hope that more of us would be slightly circumspect before screaming for revenge.

Now we know why the US has the highest per capita prison population in the world. :eyes:

[chatnoir]

35. Agree with you

The pitchforks and torches are out for a Soviet POW who was caught up in a nightmare not of his making while people like Kissinger and Cheney, the architects of such things, walk around free men.

It's no wonder people the world over find us bloodthirsty, it's in disturbing evidence even on DU.