Israel’s Atty. Gen. Rejects New Trial for Demjanjuk

JERUSALEM —  Israel’s attorney general announced Wednesday that, despite pleas from Holocaust survivors and Nazi hunters, the government will not prosecute retired Ohio auto worker John Demjanjuk a second time for war crimes, but the country’s Supreme Court deferred a final decision on a new trial.

“With a heavy heart,” Atty. Gen. Yosef Harish recommended that all proceedings against Demjanjuk be dropped, saying that another trial was not in the public interest after his acquittal on charges that he had been “Ivan the Terrible,” the guard who ran the gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp.

Harish said a second trial would likely violate the legal principle of not trying a person twice for the same crime, unless totally new charges were brought based on Demjanjuk’s alleged service at a second Nazi camp, Sobibor.

But such new charges, Harish continued, would in turn violate Israeli and international laws requiring that Demjanjuk be tried only as “Ivan the Terrible,” the basis on which he was extradited from the United States in 1986.

A final consideration, Harish said, was practical but crucial: Could credible witnesses and evidence be found to place Demjanjuk, now 73, at Sobibor during World War II?

“With heartfelt grief, I have reached the conclusion that we are no longer able to go back and charge Demjanjuk with an offense in new criminal proceedings,” Harish told the court.

“I say ‘with a heavy heart’ because what moves me and my legal colleagues is the same spirit that moves the whole House of Israel concerning the need to do justice and to bring the annihilators of our people to a final reckoning, in whatever place and whatever time our hand can reach them, even to the last days and the ends of the Earth.”

Outside the court, there were angry scenes as protesters shouted “Nazi, Nazi!” at Demjanjuk’s Israeli attorney, Yoram Sheftel, and police struggled to contain the demonstration demanding a new trial. One elderly spectator was ejected from the courtroom after shouting at Sheftel: “You’re contemptible! You defend murderers of Jews.”

Seven petitioners, arguing against the government decision, called for Demjanjuk to be tried on the Sobibor charges. In emotional appeals to the three judges, they insisted that not only was there sufficient evidence against Demjanjuk but that Israel as a Jewish state had a duty to try him again.

Noam Federman, a leader of the ultra-rightist movement Kach, said all the legal principles cited by government lawyers were secondary to the need to prosecute someone accused of being a guard at the death camps.

“I am not looking for justice--I am looking for revenge,” Federman declared.

Yisrael Yehezkeli, 75, who survived the Sobibor death camp, beat his chest and demanded, “How can it be that in Israel they want to free a murderer of our people?”

Irwin Cotler, a leading human rights lawyer from Montreal, argued that the Supreme Court’s own findings in acquitting Demjanjuk of the Treblinka charges effectively required Israel to try him on the Sobibor charges.

“Israel is obligated by international law to put all Nazi criminals on trial,” Cotler told the court; otherwise, it would be weakening the use of international law against others suspected of war crimes, he said.

And Yehuda Raveh, representing the World Jewish Congress, warned that if Demjanjuk is not tried again, “other courts and prosecutors all over the world will see this as a message that the Holocaust is over.” Demjanjuk’s acquittal, Raveh said, will become the criterion by which other countries decide whether to prosecute suspected war criminals.

“As a Jew and as an Israeli, I am outraged,” said Avi Becker, director of the World Jewish Congress’ Israel office. “To say there’s no public interest in putting Nazis on trial is like trying to rewrite the history of Israel.”

Two weeks ago, a separate five-judge panel of the Supreme Court cleared the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk of charges that he had been “Ivan the Terrible” at Treblinka, where 850,000 Jews were killed. It quashed a 1988 lower court conviction and death sentence.

Demjanjuk, who has insisted from the outset that he was never a guard at any Nazi camp but a German prisoner himself through most of the war, did not attend the four-hour hearing, but his son, John Jr., 28, praised the government for resisting the heavy public pressure to try his father again.

If the Israeli court rules against further prosecution, Demjanjuk would be free to leave Israel, though whether he would return to his home in Cleveland or his native Ukraine is still a question.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled last week that he may return to the United States for an inquiry into whether the U.S. government withheld information that might have aided him in fighting extradition. But the Justice Department has asked the court to reconsider on grounds that he was proven to be a concentration camp guard, even if not at Treblinka.

Researcher Dianna M. Cahn in The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.