Demjanjuk family awaits decision on deportation

April 9, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

CLEVELAND (AP) — The family of John Demjanjuk said Wednesday they still haven’t heard from an immigration appeals panel on a request to block his deportation to Germany, where an arrest warrant alleges the frail 89-year-old was a Nazi death camp guard.

The matter is now before the Board of Immigration Appeals, in Falls Church, Va., which previously upheld his deportation.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk is accused in a German arrest warrant of 29,000 counts of acting as an accessory to murder at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.

Prosecutors in Munich, Germany, said Demjanjuk will be formally charged in front of a judge there.

He has denied involvement in any deaths, saying that he was a Russian soldier who was a prisoner of war, held by the Germans.

He came to the United States after World War II as a refugee.

His son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said the family had not heard whether a request to reopen the case and get an emergency stay of deportation might be approved.

He said a lawyer in Germany has filed papers there seeking to stop the attempt to bring in Demjanjuk through a U.S. deportation.

Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker from Seven Hills in suburban Cleveland, had been told last week to expect deportation Sunday, but it was blocked by an immigration judge’s stay.

That stay expired Wednesday.