An 89-year-old man accused of being a Nazi death camp guard has had his deportation from the US to Germany halted.

John Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, is accused of leading Jews to the gas chambers at the Sobibor death camp in German-occupied Poland in 1943 where 29,000 people perished.

He has previously been tried in Israel after accusations surfaced that he was the notorious Nazi guard "Ivan the Terrible" in Poland at the Treblinka death camp.

Demjanjuk was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a conviction later overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

On Tuesday evening he was released from custody just hours after six immigration officers removed him in a wheelchair from his suburban home in Cleveland, Ohio, to a federal building in the city.

But, a three-judge panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of deportation saying it will mull Demjanjuk's motion to reopen the US case as he claims painful medical ailments would make travel to Germany torturous.

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Demjanjuk, his wife and their child arrived in New York aboard the USS General W. G. Haan on February 9, 1952. On November 14, 1958, Demjanjuk became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Given that Demjanjuk arrived in the USA aboard a Naval vessel it is likely that he was one of the many war criminal beneficiaries of 'project paperclip'; possibly due to his Red Army history.

This could have much to do with the way in which he has managed to evade justice for so long and will most likely die a free man.

What is it with judges and deportations?

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Well, if he was involved in Project Paper Clip, he's most likely an evil b@stard who had applied his experience gained with the Nazis to his work for Uncle Sam.

Indeed and that would explain why he has been protected from justice for so long in contrast to former British and American War Criminal employees like Klaus Barbie.

Surely by this stage they would leave him alone.

After all if the Israelis found him innocent is that not good enough?

At worst he was a lowly camp guard - nothing to be proud of I'm sure

or are their more serious charges that could possibly be proven against him at this stage?

Surely not eye witness testimony?

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He was accused of operating diesel engines that fuelled gas chambers; he was certainly an SS camp guard who had volunteered as a Red Army prisoner. There was probably much more to him than meets the eye.

Eyewitness, photocraphic and documentary evidence was presented at his 1988 trial. This included the testimony of fellow SS men.

The Israelis did not find him innocent. They convicted him and sentenced him to death in 1988 based on identification evidence from the Soviet Union and eyewitness testimony from camp survivors.

That verdict and sentence were overturned by Israeli Supreme Court in 1993 after new evidence from former Soviet Union cast doubt on whether he was Ivan the Terrible, notorious guard at Treblinka death camp in Poland. KGB and other files identified that Ivan as another man.

Israelis sent him back to States where US investigations continued. Now the Germans say he was a guard at Sobibor camp, also in Poland. It is their right to try him.

There should be no statute of limitations on mass murder and genocide. If Nazi war criminals can still be tracked down, then they should be brought to trial - whatever their age.

How anyone could be convicted of anything at least 64 years after the event is beyond me though.

Also he was in a pretty dodgy situation there if true as a lot of the people who helped Gas the Jews were eliminated after a while to destroy eyewitnesses.

He volunteered for what exactly - duty as a Camp Guard?

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He volunteered for the SS, he admits to a scar being from his blood group tatoo being removed.

The Americans who detained him after the war knew he was SS and a Ukranian. They chose to harbour and naturalise him rather than repatriate. I think the issue here is the fact that he was allowed to evade justice for so long. He must have had something to offer in return.

After the War it was common practise for ex SS to have their tatoos removed to avoid detection.

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