Demjanjuk's appeal overruled

The 89-year-old Demjanjuk claims he is too ill to fly to Germany. He is accused of being a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp during World War II and of being an accessory to the murder of some 29,000 Jews.

Demjanjuk, who is Ukrainian born, denies the charges, saying he was captured by the Nazis and then kept as a prisoner of war.

German authorities allege that Demjanjuk, then 23, worked from March-September 1943 as a guard in Nazi-occupied Poland at the Sobibor concentration camp.

Prosecutors in Munich issued an arrest warrant for him in March.

The US Supreme Court move was seen as one of the last ways to prevent his being taken to Germany. However, under court rules, his lawyers may still submit applications for a stay to the court's other eight justices.

The lower court had dismissed arguments by Demjanjuk's lawyer that transporting him to Germany would pose an undue risk to his health.

It accepted US government assurances that he would receive sufficient medical care during the trip.

The US Justice Department said it would continue to work with the German government on Demjanjuk's removal, but a spokeswoman could not provide details about the timing of a possible deportation.

A German tribunal earlier on Thursday ruled that the German government is under no duty to oppose Demjanjuk's expulsion from US soil to Germany.

Following World War II, Demjanjuk lived in Germany as a refugee until 1952 when he changed his first name from Ivan to John and moved to the United States.

Demjanjuk was acquitted in 1993 by the Israeli Supreme Court of charges that he worked at a different death camp, Treblinka, saving him from the death sentence of a lower court in Israel. But when he returned to the US, he was stripped of his US citizenship.