Court rejects Nazi guard Demjanjuk's appeal

CHICAGO (Reuters) - An appeals court on Wednesday ruled against accused Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, a decision that could bring the retired Ohio auto worker only one step away from deportation to his native Ukraine.

The Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that a U.S. immigration judge had the authority to order the 87-year-old Demjanjuk deported, marking the latest turn in a 30-year legal battle.

His lawyers had said before Wednesday's ruling that they would pursue their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if they lost in the appeals court.

Demjanjuk was once wrongly convicted of being the sadistic Nazi death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible" and sentenced to death in Israel. The Israeli Supreme Court later overturned the conviction, saying another man was probably "Ivan," a sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp where 870,000 people died.

But he was stripped of his U.S. citizenship again in 2002, with a judge ruling that he had worked as a guard at other death camps.

The issue before the appeals court was whether former Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael Creppy had the authority to rule on his deportation.

During oral arguments last November Demjanjuk's lawyer, John Broadley, told the appeals panel that Creppy was not authorized to judge the case because he had held an administrative, not adjudicative, position on the immigration review board.

But in Wednesday's ruling a three-judge panel of the appeals court held that Creppy "clearly meets the statutory definition of 'immigration judge.'"

Demjanjuk was ordered deported in December 2005 following a ruling that he had been a guard at Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland. In December 2006 Creppy had dismissed an appeal by Demjanjuk to have a deportation order overturned.

Demjanjuk's lawyers have said he could be prosecuted or face torture if he is sent back to Ukraine -- or Germany or Poland if Ukraine refused to accept him.

He was first stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1981 and extradited to Israel, where he was sentenced to death in 1988 on eyewitness testimony from Holocaust survivors that he was the Ivan of the Treblinka camp.

The Israeli Supreme Court overturned his death sentence in 1993 and freed him after records from the former Soviet Union showed another man, Ivan Marchenko, was probably the sadistic guard at Treblinka.

The United States restored Demjanjuk's citizenship in 1998 based on the wrongful accusations but the Justice Department refilled its case against him, offering as evidence a frayed German identity card that convinced a judge he had been a Nazi guard at other camps.

Demjanjuk, said to be in ill health and not following the progress of his case, lives near Cleveland.

He has said he was drafted into the Soviet Army and captured by the Germans. He immigrated to the United States in 1952 and became a naturalized citizen in 1958.

(Editing by Andrew Stern and Eric Walsh)