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Comments (0)Convicted Nazi guard John Demjanjuk was formally charged with being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews.
The Munich State Prosecutor on Monday issued the indictment accusing Demjanjuk of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at the Sobibor death camp in Poland. No date has yet been set for a trial, but Demjanjuk’s attorney has suggested it will not take place before the end of September.
The 89-year-old retired autoworker, who has spent most of the postwar period as a United States citizen, was extradited to Germany in May and has been held since then in a Munich prison.
According to the German Press Association, Demjanjuk was formally accused of having been a guard at Sobibor, where he allegedly drove thousands of victims into gas chambers. Among the evidence against him is an SS identification. His name is also on a 1943 list showing that he was transferred to Sobibor, the press group noted.
Earlier this month, Demjanjuk was declared medically fit to stand trial, but medical experts said he could not be on the stand longer than three hours per day, broken up into two segments.
Demjanjuk, who was born in Ukraine, has claimed that he was a Soviet prisoner of war in a German prison camp.
He reportedly was later trained to be a guard, and was transferred from an agricultural posting to Sobibor, where he stayed for seven months before being transferred to the concentration camp at Flossenbuürg. After the war he was labeled a “displaced person” and in 1952 immigrated to the United States.
Germany was able to apply for his extradition after Demjanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship for lying about his Nazi past.
Paris Prosecutor to Retry Halimi Kidnappers
Fourteen of 27 gang members convicted of abetting the murder of a French Jew will be retried.
Paris public prosecutors agreed to appeal the July 10 verdict against 14 members of a gang convicted of kidnapping Ilan Halimi and torturing the 23-year-old Jewish man to the point of death in 2006, according to French reports.
The announcement was made following Monday’s request for an appeal by French Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie.
In line with Alliot-Marie’s wishes, only those verdicts concerning gang members who received prison terms that were a few years shorter than recommended by the prosecutor will be appealed.
Gang leader Youssouf Fofana received the maximum punishment of life in prison and will not be retried.
Alliot-Marie’s push for an appeal has stirred debate because some French judges have said she acted out of political pressure from private interests—in this case Jewish organizations and the Halimi family, who called for an appeal over the weekend.
The French daily le Monde wrote Tuesday that past, “frequent” meetings and “the relationship between the new justice minister and Jewish leaders,” “facilitated” exchanges between the two on the Halimi verdict.
“A meeting was even planned for Monday afternoon,” Stephanie Le Bars and Pascale Robert-Diard wrote in Le Monde.
The Halimi family and Jewish organizations have argued that the shorter prison terms did not match the severity of the crime, particularly since the French court ruled that the motive contained an anti-Semitic component.
Some 250 people gathered near the justice minister’s office on Monday night in Paris in memory of Halimi, the French news agency AFP reported.
Britain Imposes Partial Arms Embargo on Israel
Britain imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel.
The British Foreign Office informed Israel that it will not supply replacement parts and other equipment for the Sa’ar 4.5 gunship because the fleet participated in Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, Ha’aretz reported Monday.
After reviewing 182 licenses for arms exports to Israel, Britain decided to cancel five, according to the Israeli daily. The review was announced in April.
The embargo follows efforts by British lawmakers and human rights organizations to impose a complete arms embargo on the Jewish state.
The British Embassy in Tel Aviv said there had been no change in policy, according to Reuters.
“We do not believe that the current situation in the Middle East would be improved by imposing an arms embargo on Israel,” the embassy said Monday in a statement. “Israel has the right to defend itself and faces real security threats.”
The statement adds that “Future decisions will take into account what has happened in the recent conflict. We do not grant export licenses where there is a clear risk that arms will be used for external aggression or internal repression.”
The statement also says that Britain supported the European Union presidency statement that called Israeli actions during the Gaza operation “disproportionate.”