Copyright 2005 - Steal what you wantSat, 14 Jun 2008 09:43:38 GMTSat, 14 Jun 2008 09:43:38 GMTDaily Kos Daily Kos This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.
The pariah loophole Former Nazis remain free because no country will accept them.
John Demjanjuk's last appeal to avoid deportation was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 19. The 88-year-old accused Nazi concentration camp guard was stripped of his citizenship and ordered sent to Ukraine, his birthplace; Poland, the locus of the crimes; or Germany, the heir to the Nazi regime under which he served.
Yet, as it now stands, he is still in the United States. Why? He can't be exiled unless another country agrees to accept him. For the time being, he remains free.
In this, Demjanjuk is not alone. There are five other former Nazi criminals against whom the U.S. Justice Department successfully completed deportation proceedings but whom no country has been willing to accept. Romanian-born Johann Leprich, a guard at Mauthausen camp in Austria, is one; his deportation was finalized in 2006. Another is Jakiw Palij, born in a region of Poland that is now in Ukraine. He was a guard at Poland's Trawniki labor camp (where in a single day in 1943, 6,000 prisoners were murdered), and his deportation was finalized in January 2006. Mykola Wasylyk, another Trawniki guard also found to be at the Budzyn camp, had his final appeal denied in 2004.
Theodor Szehinskyj, also born in a part of Ukraine that used to be Poland, was in the SS unit called the Death's Head Brigade and was a guard at the Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen and the Warsaw concentration camps. His deportation litigation was completed in March 2006.
Finally, there is Anton Tittjung. Tittjung was born in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Croatia. He was a Waffen SS member and a guard at Mauthausen.
Should any of these criminals worry that deportation is imminent, they might take comfort from the fact that the Supreme Court declined to hear Tittjung's final appeal way back in 2000. He still remains free in the United States. In addition, in recent years, four of their denaturalized Nazi peers died before they were ever deported.
Demanjuk was first charged in 1977 at age 57 for falsifying his 1952 applications to enter the U.S. and to get his citizenship in 1958. His citizenship was revoked in 1981, and he was extradited to Israel in 1986. Convicted and sentenced to death in Israel, Demjanjuk later had his sentence overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court on the grounds of reasonable doubt. In 1993, when he was 73, a U.S. Appeals Court overturned the 1981 ruling. In 1998, Demjanjuk regained his U.S. citizenship. But it was revoked again in 2002, when Demjanjuk was 82, after a new trial. An appeals court upheld the revocation in 2004. Late in 2005, an immigration judge ordered him deported. In 2006, the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld the deportation order. In January, the Sixth Circuit Court refused to review the order. Last month, the Supreme Court did the same.
Now 88, Demjanjuk, like the other war criminals still alive, has two goals in mind: stay free and run out the clock.
Demjanjuk is one of the Nazis the anti-Semite Pat Buchanan chose to defend in the 1980s. For instance, in a 1982 interview with Allan Ryan Jr., then head of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation, Buchanan said: "You've got a great atrocity that occurred 35-45 years ago, okay? Why continue to invest...put millions of dollars into investigating that. I mean, why keep a special office to investigate Nazi war crimes. ...why not abolish your office?"
One of the camps where Demjanjuk has been accused of being a guard was the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. Some 800,000 people were murdered in the camp's gas chambers. Today on the site, 17,000 stones stand in a symbolic cemetery. It is said that 17,000 is the largest number of Jews gassed in a single day at the camp. More than 130 of the stones are inscribed with the names of the cities from where victims were deported to Treblinka.
Should aged Nazi war criminals, those who helped put the 800,000 into mass graves at Treblinka and the ashes of millions of others into the ground at other camps be left in peace to live out their dotage? What should be the statute of limitations on war crimes?
The Overnight News Digest is posted, and includes a story that puts the lie to Senator Lindsey Graham's comment Thursday: "They said an al Qaeda member has a constitutional right to go to a federal court of their choosing and say, 'Judge, let me go,' The Nazis never had that right."
John Demjanjuk would beg to differ, Senator.
Meteor Blades Open Thread for Night Owls & Early BirdsJohn DemjanjukSat, 14 Jun 2008 05:53:48 GMT
This evening's Rescue Rangers are ybruti, smokeymonkey, ezdidit, YatPundit, grog, joyful and Avila as editor.
exmearden (hey, folks, how about helping her get to Netroots Nation?) reflects on a conversation with her daughter and a difficult personal choice, while reminding us that women's rights are at stake in the November election, in But if I did, well really, what's it to you? (Avila)
Veteran jimstaro is passionate in his plea for decent post-war care for our traumatized troops, and he brings word of an important PBS program airing tonight titled, Fighting the Army: an in-depth look at veterans forced to battle the military to get the care they need - and deserve. Maura Satchell thoughtfully provides your local listings. (ezdidit)
Justice for Omar Khadr. That is what yesterday's SCOTUS decision will give us. Thank pale cold for the update! (smokeymonkey)
Political action: Gas Prices is chock-full of of thoughtful ideas from A Siegel on ways to combine Energy Smarts with Political Smarts. (joyful)
Deeply concerned about the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest, author Michael Shellenberger criticizes governmental policies in When Small Isn't Beautiful. (ybruti)
Stroszek compares the traditional media bias that Obama doesn't "stand for anything" with McCain, who really doesn't stand for anything, in John McCain: Another Republican Empty Suit. (grog)
The Storyteller continues her tale of building a laybrinth in Smelling the Flowers. (YatPundit)
According to John McCain: Guantanamo Ruling One of the Worst but happily, banjolele is here to remind the GOP nominee of other important court decisions he'll hate just as much. (joyful)
What do Miranda rights, Thurgood Marshall's appointment to SCOTUS and the Pentagon Papers have in common? If you don't know the answers, head on over to iampunha'sJune 13, 1966, '67 and '71: your government at work for a fascinating history refresher. (Avila)
Providing historical context to Scalia's fatuous dissenting opinion (re Boumedienne), NCrissieB warns us that it is indeed true that Americans will die. (ezdidit)
Jeff Huber explores the issue of whether Iran is enriching uranium, providing nuance to the absurd but compelling question he poses, Has Iran Stopped Nuking Its Wife? (ezdidit)
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his wife reported more than $100,000 of credit card liabilities, according to financial disclosure documents released Friday.
The presidential candidate and his wife Cindy reported piling up debt on a charge card between $10,000 and $15,000. His wife’s solo charge card has between $100,000 and $250,000 in debt to American Express.
Another charge card with American Express, this one for a “dependent child,” is carrying debt in the range of $15,000 and $50,000.
Reckless indebtedness during a year in which Cindy McCain sold one of their 10 or so residences for a profit of more than a million dollars. That is a pretty sure sign of financial irresponsibility. By contrast, documents for the far less wealthy Obama family show that they have no credit card debt. Quite the opposite, the Obamas have set aside funds for their daughters' college education.
By piling up credit card debt when he can easily afford to pay it off, McCain finally has convinced me that he was speaking the truth (for once) when he said last December, "The issue of economics is something that I've really never understood as well as I should." This is the man who wants to lead the US at a time when the the federal debt (PDF) has reached record levels - thanks to the reckless fiscal policies of George Bush, which McCain would continue.
Little wonder then that McCain has also been all over the map regarding a balanced federal budget and the state of the US economy. Characteristically, McCain is both for and against making it a priority to balance the federal budget.
McCain promised he’d offer a balanced budget by the end of his first term. Feb. 15, 2008
Mr. McCain — who said in February in Wisconsin that he would balance the budget by the end of his first term as president — seemed to reconsider that on Tuesday, saying at a news conference later in Villanova that “economic conditions are reversed” and that he would have a balanced budget within eight years. April 15, 2008
John McCain will not leave office without balancing the federal budget. He will not do it with smoke and mirrors. When he leaves office, he wants to leave a budget that stays balanced after he is gone... April 15, 2008 press release
Republican John McCain said yesterday that cutting taxes and stimulating the economy are more important than balancing the budget... April 20, 2008
Yet, as it now stands, he is still in the United States. Why? He can't be exiled unless another country agrees to accept him. For the time being, he remains free. 
