Court: Demjanjuk was Nazi camp guard

CINCINNATI, April 30 (UPI) -- A U.S. appeals court in Cincinnati ruled Friday there is "convincing evidence" retired Cleveland autoworker John Demjanjuk was a Nazi camp guard.

The 6th U.S. Circuit appeals panel said the government has proved "through clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence" that Demjanjuk was a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp and at the Majdanek and Flossenbürg concentration camps, and a member of the SS-run Trawniki unit "dedicated to exploiting and exterminating" Jews in Poland.

The appeals court's decision affirms a 2002 federal District Court ruling stripping Demjanjuk of his U.S. citizenship.

A federal court found in 1981 that Demjanjuk was "Ivan the Terrible," a gas chamber operator at the Treblinka extermination camp. After an Israeli court sentenced him to death in 1986, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled there was doubt he was "Ivan" and returned him to the United States.

Demjanjuk's family has said it would appeal.