Demjanjuk lawyer asks case to be closed

BERLIN (AP) - John Demjanjuk's attorney asked Munich's state court on Friday to close the case against his client, arguing that Israel has already tried him on accusations of being a guard at the Nazi's Sobibor death camp.

Demjanjuk has been in German custody since May, when he was transferred from his home in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, after losing a court battle to avoid deportation from the United States.

Munich prosecutors formally charged him last month as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 people at the Sobibor death camp. The Munich court has yet to decide whether to accept the charges and set a trial date.

Demjanjuk's attorney Ulrich Busch filed a motion arguing that the German charges should be dropped, citing a 1993 ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court overturning a 1988 conviction and death sentence in Israel for being a Nazi guard known as Ivan the Terrible who operated the gas chamber at the Treblinka death camp.

Munich prosecutors said in their indictment that the Israeli case did not focus on Demjanjuk's alleged activities at Sobibor. They could not immediately be reached for comment on Busch's motion.

The Israeli Supreme Court had said in reviewing the Israeli case that there was strong evidence Demjanjuk had served as a guard at another death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, Sobibor.

But Israel's attorney general at the time would not prosecute Demjanjuk on the Sobibor accusation, saying it could violate the ban on double jeopardy, or trying him a second time on the same charges.

"Common sense alone should cause anyone interested in this case to wonder why the Israelis would have let my father return to the USA upon his acquittal if it were possible to fairly try him again," Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr. said in an e-mail from the U.S. to the Associated Press.

Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk denies any wrong doing. He maintains that he was a Red Army soldier who was held as a prisoner of war by the Germans.

Busch has also filed several other motions asking for the case to be dismissed, but they are still pending and it was not clear when they would be heard.