In a sharp rebuke to University Attorney Allan A. Ryan Jr., a federal appeals court ruled yesterday that Ryan and other former government lawyers "acted with reckless disregard for the truth" in the prosecution of John Demjanjuk as the Nazi death camp guard Ivan the Terrible.

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Ryan, the former director of the Justice Department's elite Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations, intentionally withheld evidence in the Demjanjuk case and is guilty of prosecutorial misconduct.

Reading from a statement last night, Ryan accepted full responsibility for the actions of his office, but said he strongly disagrees with court's decision.

"I am deeply saddened that the court of appeals has concluded--erroneously, I believe--that my office was careless in the handling of evidence," Ryan said.

"As the director of that office, I take full responsibility for the court's criticism," he added.

The court did not recommend sanctions against Ryan or other lawyers, and it is unclear whether they will be disciplined.

A spokesperson in the Justice Department indicated the government would appeal the ruling.

Ryan was the director of Office of Special Investigations from 1980 to 1983. During that time, Ryan, who came to work at Harvard in 1985, helped organize the office's prosecution of Demjanjuk, a former Cleveland autoworker.

The Sixth Circuit eventually found Demjanjuk to be Ivan the Terrible, the guard at the Treblinka death camp responsible for exterminating hundreds of thousands of Jews. In 1986 he was extradited to Israel, where he was sentenced to death.

However, new evidence obtained in 1991 from the files of the former Soviet Union appears to show that another man, Ivan Marcenko, was Ivan the Terrible. The files indicated instead that Demjanjuk was a guard at Sobibor.

Shortly after the files were released, the Sixth Circuit launched an investigation into possible prosecutorial misconduct by Justice Department attorneys, including Ryan. And, citing the new evidence, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned Demjanjuk's murder conviction.

Yesterday's decision by the Sixth Circuit reverses the findings of a 198-page report prepared earlier this year by U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Wiseman Jr., who was appointed by the Sixth Circuit to investigate.

Wiseman's report concluded that Ryan and other government attorneys made serious mistakes in the Demjanjuk case, but had acted "in good faith." Wiseman also said he did not believe the contention of Ryan and others that Demjanjuk was Ivan.

"I believe that [Wiseman] was correct when heconcluded that the attorneys at the Office ofSpecial Investigations acted honestly and in goodfaith," Ryan said. "It is very painful to see thatthe court of appeals has taken a view of theevents in this case that is so at odds with what Ibelieve the evidence before [Wiseman] showed."

The court's decision yesterday will probablymake it easier for Demjanjuk to regain hisAmerican citizenship, which was taken from him bya federal court in 1981.

"Justice has been done and God bless America,"Demjanjuk's son-in-law, Ed Nishnic, told theAssociated Press