Demjanjuk trial: Expert witness casts doubt on statement being used against defendant

Witness casts doubt on evidence against Demjanjuk

MUNICH — An expert witness says a statement being used as evidence against John Demjanjuk should be treated with the “highest caution” because it came from a KGB interrogation.

Demjanjuk, a retired Ohio auto worker is charged with 27,900 counts of accessory to murder for allegedly serving as a guard at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in 1943. He denies being there.

Another guard at the camp, Ignat Danilchenko, told the KGB in 1979 he remembered Demjanjuk from Sobibor.

But historian Dieter Pohl told the court Thursday it appeared Danilchenko was telling the KGB what interrogators wanted to hear.

Co-prosecutor Stefan Schuenemann dismissed the possible setback, saying the statement was only “a small piece” of the overall evidence against Demjanjuk.