US agents took suspected Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk from his Ohio home today to deport him to Germany where he faces charges in the deaths of 29,000 Jews.
However, a US appeals court has called a halt to the deportation.
Mr Demjanjuk's son petitioned the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to consider whether deporting his 89-year-old father to Germany amounted to torture, because of what his family said is his frail health.
US prosecutors said the court lacked jurisdiction, which two appeals court judges said was an issue it needed to consider before lifting the stay.
Mr Demjanjuk was removed from his house in a wheelchair and was to be flown overnight to Munich where prosecutors accuse him of being an accessory in 1943 killings at Sobibor death camp, an area in Poland then occupied by Nazi Germany.
The Ukraine native was sentenced to death in Israel in 1988 as the sadistic guard "Ivan the Terrible" at Treblinka where 870,000 died. Israel's highest court later ruled he probably was not "Ivan" of Treblinka but US officials then stripped him of his citizenship saying he had worked at three other camps and hid that information at his US entry in 1951.
He had been expected to arrive in Munich on Thursday. Mr Demjanjuk was originally scheduled to be deported on April 5 but won an 11th-hour stay, saying he had spinal problems, kidney failure and anemia, was very weak and needed help to stand up or move about.
His son says he has life-threatening problems and sending him to Germany would amount to torture.
But the US Board of Immigration Appeals last week revoked a stay that had prevented his deportation, and his lawyers had filed a last-ditch appeal with a federal court in Ohio to try to get it reinstated.
The retired car industry worker had denied any role in the Holocaust. He said he was drafted into the Russian army in 1941, became a German prisoner of war a year later and served at German prison camps until 1944.
In March, Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Mr Demjanjuk and asked the United States to deport him so he could stand trial.
Reuters