DES MOINES – A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling revoking the citizenship of a former Nazi concentration camp guard.

The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal district judge was correct in revoking the citizenship of John Hansl, 81, who currently lives in Des Moines.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint against Hansl in July 2003, claiming he hid his military service when he applied for a visa to come to the United States in 1955. He was granted a visa and became a U.S. citizen in 1960.

Hansl was a guard with the Waffen SS at the Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camps in 1943 and 1944. His duties included guarding prisoners from watch towers and marching prisoners at gunpoint to work sites near the prison, court records show.

He was ordered to shoot any prisoner who tried to escape and helped search for an escaped prisoner who was later shot to death, although Hansl did not pull he trigger, court records show.

Hansl claimed he did not voluntarily join the Waffen SS and that officials knew of his military service before he was granted a visa to emigrate to the United States.

The legal argument in the case revolved around a 1953 law designed to control the flow of immigrants to the U.S. after World War II.

Lawyers for Hansl claimed the law required a person to have “personally assisted” in the persecution of others before they could be denied a visa.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt revoked Hansl’s citizenship in April 2005, ruling that Hansl’s conduct as a guard left “no room for factual dispute whether he personally advocated or assisted in persecution.”