Washington - The US Board of Immigration Appeals ruled Friday that Nazi-era war-crimes suspect John Demjanjuk can be deported to Germany. The decision means that federal agents can pick him up at any time and send him to Germany, the Plain Dealer newspaper reported.

Demjanjuk, who turned 89 on April 3, had filed a last-minute court motion to stop his deportation, arguing that he was too ill to travel and stand trial. His bid to stay in the US was to avoid likely prosecution for his role in the killings of 29,000 Jews.

His US attorney, John Broadley, filed the appeal after the US Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia, on Monday had cleared the way for Demjanjuk to be taken to Germany as early as Wednesday. The court had earlier stayed the planned deportation, but then reversed course.

Government lawyers said Demjanjuk's legal claims were based on "speculation, erroneous assumption, medical evidence that belies his assertion of a dire medical condition and on a novel and frivolous claim that legitimate German legal proceedings that may be commenced against him would be designed to cause him suffering and would subject him to severe mental and physical anguish, constituting torture."

Demjanjuk's lawyers and his family say he suffers from kidney stones and a bone-marrow disease.

German evidence suggests that Demjanjuk, then 23, was a Nazi guard from March-September 1943 at Sobibor concentration camp, at a location that is now part of Poland. He apparently worked at the camp while at least 29,000 Jews were put to death there.

After World War II, he lived in Germany as a refugee. In 1952, 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.

Munich prosecutors issued a warrant three weeks ago for the arrest of the Ukrainian-born man, who has been stripped on his US citizenship and is now stateless.

Washington cannot prosecute him over the allegations but has been eager to expel the former US car worker.(dpa)