US to deport former Nazi camp guard

A US judge has ruled that a former Nazi concentration camp guard who was found hiding in the United States will be deported.

A US judge has ruled that a former Nazi concentration camp guard who was found hiding in the United States will be deported.

Judge Larry Dean granted the government's request to deport Mr Johann Leprich in a written ruling issued on Friday. The 78-year-old retired machinist will be deported to his native Romania or possibly Germany or Hungary,

Mr Leprich moved to the United States in 1952 and became a citizen in 1958, but the Justice Department later discovered his Nazi past and moved to revoke his citizenship in 1986.

Mr Leprich admitted serving during the Second World War in the Death's Head Battalion, a branch of the SS that supplied guards to concentration camps. He worked as a guard at Nazi-ruled Austria's Mauthausen concentration camp, where 119,000 people were executed or worked to death in 1938-45.

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At the end of a 1987 denaturalisation hearing in Detroit federal court, Mr Leprich moved to Canada, but it later emerged he was living secretly in the United States.

On July 1st, authorities found him hiding behind a panel under the basement stairs at his family's home about 25 miles north east of Detroit, Michigan.

A date for the deportation has not been set.

PA