Accused Nazi death camp guard to appeal deportation ruling

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk has lost a bid to stay his deportation to Germany, where he faces charges in the deaths of 29,000 Jews, but will appeal that decision in federal court on Monday, his son said.

Demjanjuk, 89, had asked the Board of Immigration Appeals to stay deportation pending a simultaneous motion to the board to reopen the case. On Friday it denied the motion, saying the bid to reopen had little chance of being granted. Technically, that motion is still pending.

John Demjanjuk Jr. said his father would file an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

"Our filing will be made on Monday," he told Reuters on Saturday.

Demjanjuk, who is reported by his family to be in poor health, was sentenced to death in Israel in 1988, convicted of being a sadistic guard "Ivan the Terrible" at Treblinka where 870,000 died.

That country's highest court later ruled he was not "Ivan." U.S. officials, however, stripped him of his citizenship, saying that he had worked at three other camps and hid that information at his U.S. entry in 1951.

The Ukraine-born Demjanjuk denies any role in the Holocaust and claims he was drafted into the Russian army in 1941, became a German prisoner of war a year later and served at German prison camps until 1944.

"History will show that he was a victim of the Germans in 1942, a victim of Germany and the U.S. Justice Department when he was extradited to Israel only to be acquitted, and now once again a victim of the Germans in 2009," Demjanjuk Jr. said in a statement on Friday.

He has said that his father, a retired auto worker in Ohio, suffers a life-threatening illness and that German prosecutors seeking to put him on trial should send a doctor. Moving him or jailing him violates international standards against torture, he said.