A federal court on Friday denied former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk's attempt to block his extradition to Germany to face charges of assisting in the wartime murder of thousands of Jews.
"Based on the medical information before the court... the court cannot find that the petitioner's removal to Germany is likely to cause irreparable harm sufficient to warrant a stay of removal," an appeals court ruled.
"His motion for a stay of removal pending review is denied."
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on when Demjanjuk would be deported except to say "the US Government will continue to seek the removal of Mr. Demjanjuk to Germany."
The decision is the latest development in a decades-long saga over Demjanjuk's wartime actions.
In a dramatic twist last month, Demjanjuk won an 11th-hour reprieve when the court stayed his deportation shortly after he was carried out of his Cleveland, Ohio, home in a wheelchair to be put on a flight to Munich.
The appeals court rejected an argument by Demjanjuk's lawyer that his client is in such poor health jailing and trying him in Germany would cause him pain amounting to torture.
"At most, he has offered speculation that German authorities may not adequately attend to his medical needs while he is in that country's custody," the court ruled.
Born in Ukraine in 1920, Demjanjuk was a soldier in the Red Army who was captured by the Nazis in the spring of 1942.
He was trained at Treblinka in Nazi-occupied Poland and served two years in the camps of Sobibor and Majdanek, also in occupied Poland, and in Flossenburg in Bavaria, southern Germany.
Demjanjuk has always insisted he was forced to work for the Nazis and had been mistaken by survivors for other cruel guards.
He immigrated to the United States in 1952 with his family, settling in Ohio where he found work in the auto industry.
Condemned to death in Israel in 1988 after he was convicted of being the sadistic "Ivan the Terrible", the verdict was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court because of doubts about his identity.
He was returned to the United States over strenuous objections from Holocaust survivors and Jewish groups who argued there was sufficient evidence that he served as a death camp guard to warrant another trial.
In 1999, the US government filed new charges using fresh evidence that surfaced following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he was stripped of his citizenship in 2002.
Germany issued a warrant for Demjanjuk's arrest on March 11 on charges of assisting in the murder of 29,000 Jews.
Source: AFP American Edition
