A German court has found John Demjanjuk guilty of accessory to murder of 28,060 Jews at the Sobibor death camp, where he served as a guard, in Poland during World War II. The court sentenced 91 year old Demjanjuk to five years in prison. The maximum sentence for the charges is six years.
Demjanjuk's attorney has said throughout the 18-month trial that if his client was found guilty, he would appeal the verdict.
Demjanjuk entered the court today in a wheelchair. He was silent during the reading. The media thronged the courthouse waiting for the verdict.
The German prosecutor said that Demjanjuk was a Red Army soldier captured in 1942, and that he later joined a Nazi organized Russian army unit and was sent to serve at the death camp, where he was responsible for especially vicious atrocities. He was not charged with any specific murder.
After the war, Demjanjuk moved to the US. The US revoked his citizenship for lying about his past, and deported him twice, first to Israel and subsequently to Germany. Today's verdict ends the 18-year legal case.
In the 1980s, Demjanjuk was convicted by an Israeli court and sentenced to death, after being found guilty of being the particularly sadistic "Ivan the Terrible" guard at the Treblinka death camp. On receipt of new evidence from the former Soviet Union, the Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 1993 and ordered his release on the grounds that he had likely been identified as the wrong death camp guard.
Demjanjuk's lawyer in that case, Adv. Yoram Sheftel, told Hebrew daily "Ma'ariv" that he would not be surprised if the German court convicted Demjanjuk, even though there had been no change in the evidence since the Israeli trial.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 12, 2011
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