Demjanjuk Protests Appeal Delay

JERUSALEM —  John Demjanjuk, convicted in Israel as the brutal Nazi camp guard “Ivan the Terrible,” began a three-day fast Monday to protest a delay in the ruling on his appeal, his lawyer said.

A five-judge Supreme Court panel wound up the hearings on the 72-year-old Demjanjuk’s appeal last June.

“Nine months have passed, nothing has happened,” attorney Yoram Sheftel said. “Any jury in the Western World would come to its conclusions within one hour.

“My client is approaching 73. At this age I am very concerned,” he said.

Demjanjuk arrived in Israel on Feb. 28, 1986, after being extradited from the United States. He was convicted in April, 1988, of crimes against Jews and against humanity and was sentenced to death.

Death camp survivors identified Demjanjuk as a sadistic gas chamber operator at the Treblinka death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where 850,000 Jews were killed in 1942 and 1943.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk says he is a victim of mistaken identity. During the appeal, Sheftel introduced testimony from Nazi guards questioned in the Soviet Union who said that “Ivan the Terrible” was another man named Ivan Marchenko.