Expert witness says photo once removed from Nazi ID card being as evidence against Demjanjuk

Demjanjuk expert: ID card photo removed

MUNICH — A former U.S. Secret Service forensics expert says the photo glued to a Nazi-issued identity card being used by prosecutors against John Demjanjuk appears to have been removed and later reattached.

Larry Stewart testified Thursday that there are staple holes through the photograph but not through the card itself, indicating it was likely once stapled to another document.

Demjanjuk is a Ukrainian-born former Ohio autoworker being tried on some 28,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he was a guard at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp. His defense argues the card is a fake.

But Stewart told the Munich state court that in his experience photos often came off wartime documents and were stapled to separate pieces of paper in postwar archives.