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Deportation battle

jen/pfd, AP/AFPApril 21, 2009

The US government has sought to clear the way to deport alleged former death camp guard John Demjanjuk, just days after a US court postponed his deportation to wait for proof that he is fit to travel to Germany.

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Demjanjuk is carried out of his Cleveland, OH, home
Demjanjuk got an 11th hour reprieveImage: picture alliance / landov

The US Justice Department's brief seeks to dismiss the pending motion to stay Demjanjuk's deportation "because the matter sought to be reviewed is now moot."

The government said in a brief filed in a federal appeals court on Monday that Demjanjuk's attorneys won the emergency stay last week by arguing that a motion before the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Virginia, had yet to be considered.

The board on Thursday denied Demjanjuk's request to reopen the case.

The 89-year-old suburban Cleveland man is facing an arrest warrant in Germany that accuses him of working as a guard in 1943 at a death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The government said in its filing that Demjanjuk had "engaged in numerous delaying tactics and that reasons no longer exist for an emergency stay of deportation."

Demjanjuk got an 11th-hour reprieve on April 14 when a federal appeals court in Ohio granted the 89-year-old man's request for a stay of deportation shortly after he had been carried out of his home in a wheelchair to be taken to a waiting flight.