'Nazi Guard' Demjanjuk's Deportation Stayed

Before he could be deported, though, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay in the deportation order, the latest step in the case that has roiled the Jewish community for decades.

German authorities have accused Demjanjuk, 89, of involvement in killings at Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in Poland, during World War II. He has denied the allegations.

His deportation would close a chapter in one of the longest-running pursuits of an alleged Holocaust perpetrator. It also would set the stage for what likely would prove to be an extraordinary German war crimes trial.

In 1988, Mr Demjanjuk was sentenced to death in Israel for crimes against humanity after Holocaust survivors identified him as the notorious "Ivan the Terrible", a guard at the Treblinka death camp.

Israel's highest court later overturned his sentence and freed him, after newly unearthed documents from the former Soviet Union indicated that "Ivan the Terrible" had probably been a different man.

Mr Demjanjuk returned to the US, but in 2002 had his US citizenship stripped because of his failure to disclose his work at Nazi camps when he first arrived as a refugee.

In 2005, a US immigration judge ruled that he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine.

Germany issued a warrant for his arrest last month, and his family have been fighting to prevent him from being deported ever since.