Demjanjuk says his trial for war crimes has been ‘torture’

John Demjanjuk addressed the court at his German war crimes trial for the first time, expressing anger over the proceedings.

In a statement read by his attorney, Ulrich Busch, in the Munich courtroom April 13, Demjanjuk, 90, called the trial “torture.” Demjanjuk has been charged as an accessory to the murder of 29,700 Jews at the Sobibor death camp in Poland in 1943.

According to reports in the German media, Demjanjuk said he was “forcibly deported” from the United States to face a “false accusation” after “30 years of legal persecution in Israel, the United States and Poland.” He blamed Jewish groups, namely the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, for leveling false charges against him. — jta