Deportation of Karl Linnas

Your editorial (March 18) “Whose Justice?” opposes the deportation of the Nazi war criminal Karl Linnas to the Soviet Union. However, the editorial fails to state what Karl Linnas did to merit deportation or what the evidence against him was. I served as trial attorney in the Justice Department Office of Special Investigation (OSI), and was one of the prosecutors in the Linnas case.

The case against Linnas has been heard by five U.S. courts. Each of those courts found the evidence against Linnas to be “overwhelming.” That evidence consisted of the following:

1--Linnas wrote several documents in 1941 that he signed “Karl Linnas, Chief of the Tartu Concentration Camps.” These documents were examined by an FBI forensic document expert, who testified that there was no evidence that these documents were not authentic. At his trial, Linnas took the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify regarding these documents, claiming that his answer would incriminate him.

2--In interviews with the New York Times and Newsday in 1961, Linnas admitted being in charge of the guard duty detail at the Nazi concentration camp in Tartu, Estonia.

3--A friend of Linnas who lives on Long Island testified at the trial. This individual testified that Linnas told him that he had served as a guard at the concentration camp.

4--Witnesses who currently live in Tartu, Estonia, testified by videotape at Linnas’ trial that he was chief of the concentration camp. They testified that Linnas supervised the transportation of innocent Jewish women and children from his camp to a nearby anti-tank ditch. At the ditch, the women and children were tied by their hands and brought in their underwear to the edge of the ditch and forced to kneel. The guards then opened fire and murdered them. There was eyewitness testimony that Linnas, on at least one occasion, announced the victims’ death sentence at the side of the ditch and gave the order to fire.

Witnesses testified that on at least one occasion, Linnas personally approached the edge of the ditch and fired into it. Another eyewitness recounted having seen Linnas help direct Jews out of a school and onto a school bus. That witness recalled that Linnas helped a small child with a doll onto the bus, and that the doll was later placed in a storage area for the personal effects of those who had been killed.

At his trial in a U.S. District Court, Linnas did not deny his guilt--he took the Fifth Amendment, claiming that his answers would incriminate him.

Five U.S. courts, including two panels of the U.S. Court of Appeals, have found that Linnas served as chief of a Nazi concentration camp and participated in murders and other atrocities against men, women, and children. Thirteen U.S. judges have unanimously found against Linnas. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his case on three occasions. Certainly, if there was any question as to his guilt, the Supreme Court would have heard the case. Linnas has received much more consideration in the U.S. courts than most criminals receive.

The law is clear that Linnas must be deported to the Soviet Union. That is where his crimes took place. Misplaced sympathy for this man, who showed no sympathy for his innocent victims, or antipathy for the Soviet Union, should not stand in the way of justice.

JEFFREY N. MAUSNER

Los Angeles