Deporting of Alleged Nazi Concentration Camp Chief OKd
A federal appeals court on Wednesday approved the deportation of a Long Island man to the Soviet Union where he faces execution for allegedly ordering mass killings at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
Defense lawyers were expected to make a last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the deportation of Karl Linnas, 67, of Greenlawn, N.Y.
The government says there is ample documentation that Linnas headed the Tartu, Estonia, concentration camp, in what is now the Soviet Union, where some 12,000 people were killed in World War II.
In 1982, the Supreme Court let stand the decision to strip Linnas of his U.S. citizenship. He was ordered deported in 1983, and that decision was upheld by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and by the high court.
The same appeals court issued an emergency stay on March 16, but a three-judge panel of the court lifted it Wednesday, leaving the possibility of immediate deportation.
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