AFP - US immigration officials were Tuesday preparing to detain former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk ahead of his extradition to Germany, his lawyer told AFP.
  
US authorities "are going to try to remove him at three o'clock today" from his home in Cleveland, Ohio, lawyer John Broadley said.
  
The 89-year-old has been subject to expulsion from the United States since Friday when an immigration appeals board rejected his petition for a stay of extradition.
  
On Tuesday Demjanjuk had sought the protection of a US federal appeals court in his latest bid to block his expulsion to Germany where he is wanted on charges of helping to murder Jews during World War II.
  
"We have filed a petition for review in the court of appeals and motion for a stay in the court of appeals this morning Tuesday," Broadley said earlier, adding he had no idea when there would be a decision.
  
The legal battle has dragged on for more than a month since Germany issued an order for Demjanjuk's arrest on March 11.
  
The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk is accused of having voluntarily served the Nazis at the Sobibor and Majdanek concentration camps in Poland in 1943, and of aiding the killing of at least 29,000 Jews.
  
He arrived in the United States with his family in 1952, found work in the automobile industry and settled in Ohio. Condemned to death in Israel in 1988, he was later acquitted by the Israeli supreme court amid doubts over his identity.
  
In 2002, a US judge stripped him of his US citizenship.