War Crimes

With a coat draped over his cuffed hands, the tired-looking man with the Santa Claus beard and soft hat slipped away from his escorts for a moment and lunged toward a crowd of reporters. "What they are doing right now," shouted Karl Linnas, "is murder and kidnaping!" Before he could say more, American immigration officers hustled the 67-year-old Long Island resident into an office at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport. About two hours later Linnas was driven out onto the tarmac and led up a ramp to an Ilyushin Il-62M airliner bound for Prague. Officials from the Soviet Union took custody of him there and shipped him to the Estonian capital of Tallinn. Linnas was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death 25 years ago for running a Nazi death camp in Estonia during World War II. And now he had to face his fate.

Although grumbling about the quarter-century delay, the Soviets, who annexed Estonia during the war, nevertheless complimented the U.S. for finally deporting the immigrant. Moscow officials left little doubt about his future. Soviet Spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov said Linnas could appeal for a pardon, but that any delay in the execution of the final sentence "will be shorter than that which is usual for American justice." The Soviet Foreign Ministry later announced that a court would review Linnas' death sentence, as well as evidence against him discovered in the years since his conviction.

American officials had qualms about consigning Linnas to the Soviet judicial system. After all, the 1962 verdict had been published in the journal Socialist Legality even before the trial took place. But the Soviet evidence against him was overwhelming. In denying Linnas' plea that, in the name of humanity, he not be sent back, a three-judge panel in New York City declared that "noble words . . . ring hollow when spoken by a man who ordered the extermination of innocent men, women and children kneeling at the edge of a mass grave." Last week the Supreme Court in a 6-to-3 vote refused to extend a temporary order blocking the expulsion.

Attorney General Edwin Meese had earlier sought to send Linnas anywhere but the Soviet Union. Two weeks ago Meese appeared to have found an alternative when Linnas' family said Panama was willing to accept him. But after the World Jewish Congress decried the deal as tantamount to sanctuary for a war criminal, Panama reneged on the agreement. With no country willing to accept him, and his legal maneuvers to stay in the U.S. exhausted, Linnas had no alternative but to return.