Demjanjuk was ordered to surrender to immigration office, his son says

SEVEN HILLS, Ohio (AP) — Immigration agents served John Demjanjuk, accused of being a Nazi guard, on Friday with a notice to surrender to an immigration office in Cleveland, his son said — the latest volley in a more than 30-year legal battle over Demjanjuk’s citizenship.

Demjanjuk, of Seven Hills in suburban Cleveland, faces deportation to Germany. An arrest warrant in Munich accuses him of 29,000 counts of accessory to murder at a death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.

The notice was served one day after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the 89-year-old suspect’s appeal to stop the deportation.

Demjanjuk Jr. did not say how his father would respond or whether the government set a deadline for surrender.

Anyone subject to a deportation order would be considered a fugitive by federal authorities if he or she failed to surrender by the stated time, according to Julie Myers, assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the latter part of the Bush administration.

In Germany, Demjanjuk lawyer Ulrich Busch challenged the Munich arrest warrant on Friday, citing 1979 testimony given by a Sobibor camp guard who says he does not remember Demjanjuk from either Sobibor or a training camp where he is also alleged to have served.