Demjanjuk indicted for killing 30,000 Jews

Convicted Nazi guard John Demjanjuk was formally charged this week with being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews. The Munich State Prosecutor issued the indictment July 13 accusing Demjanjuk of being an accessory to the murder of Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.

No date has been set for a trial, but Demjanjuk’s attorney has suggested it will not take place before the end of September.

The 89-year-old retired autoworker, who has spent most of the postwar period as a United States citizen, was extradited to Germany in May and has been held since then in a Munich prison. — jta

Halimi kidnappers to be retried in Paris

Fourteen members of the self-proclaimed “Barbarians” gang will be retried in Paris for their role in the killing of Ilan Halimi, a French Jewish cell phone salesman who was kidnapped, tortured and found dying near a railroad track south of Paris in February 2006.

All 27 members of the gang were sentenced in the case last week, but in a swift turn-around, the office of the prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, agreed to ask the Court of Appeals to seek longer sentences than those originally handed out.

The gang’s leader, Youssouf Fofana, will not be among those facing a retrial. The 28-year-old French national, born to immigrants from the Ivory Coast, was the only defendant convicted of murder and was sentenced to a maximum life sentence without the possibility of parole for 22 years.

Two of Fofana’s accomplices also received heavy sentences of 15 and 18 years behind bars, but many of the defendants were given lighter terms and two were acquitted altogether. — jpost.com

Britain to deny Israel gunship parts

The British Foreign Office informed Israel that it will not supply replacement parts and other equipment for the Sa’ar 4.5 gunship because the fleet participated in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, Ha’aretz reported.

After reviewing 182 licenses for arms exports to Israel, Britain decided to cancel five, according to Ha’aretz.

The British Embassy in Tel Aviv said “future decisions will take into account what has happened in the recent conflict. We do not grant export licenses where there is a clear risk that arms will be used for external aggression or internal repression.”

The statement also says that Britain supported the European Union presidency statement that called Israeli actions during the Gaza operation “disproportionate.” — jta

Thesis on neo-Nazism holds up under review

A student’s controversial master’s thesis on neo-Nazism, which was taken off library shelves last September and deleted from the university’s online repository, has been returned to library shelves at Waikato University in New Zealand.

A 10-month internal investigation by the university found last week that there were no grounds to uphold complaints against Roel Van Leeuwen’s master’s thesis, which focuses on Kerry Bolton, a right-wing extremist who was a former secretary of the New Zealand National Front and New Zealand Fascist Union. Bolton claimed that the thesis amounted to “criminal libel.” — jta