U.S. Set to Deport Doomed Nazi to Execution in Soviet : High Court Refuses to Intervene

The Supreme Court refused today to block the deportation of Karl Linnas, pushing the accused Nazi death camp commander a step closer to execution in the Soviet Union for war crimes.

The move sent lawyers for Linnas rushing from court to court in Washington in a last-ditch attempt to prevent his deportation. U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan turned down one request, and a federal appeals court was asked to hear another.

Justice Department officials said they are confident that further appeals will fail and that Linnas will be shipped out of the country tonight.

Anu Linnas, the accused war criminal’s daughter, accompanied lawyers as they hurriedly mapped out a plan for emergency appeals. “I’m being jerked around and my father’s life is at stake,” she said as she walked from one courtroom to another.

She said she talked to her father in New York on Easter Sunday. “He’s holding up,” she said, choking back tears. “He’s probably holding up better than I am.”

If deported, Linnas will become the first accused Nazi war criminal sent to the Soviet Union against his will.

Treblinka death camp guard Fedor Fedorenko, deported in December, 1984, asked to be sent to the Soviet Union. He has been sentenced to death, pending appeal.

The justices, voting 6 to 3, denied the effort to stop the deportation. Justices William J. Brennan, Harry A. Blackmun and Sandra Day O’Connor would have granted the stay.

The high court twice before refused to intervene in the emotionally charged case.

Linnas, 67, a retired land surveyor from Greenlawn, N.Y., is accused of participating in mass murder during World War II while head of the Tartu concentration camp.

About 12,000 Killed

An estimated 12,000 people were killed in the camp in Nazi-occupied Estonia, now a part of the Soviet Union.

Linnas was convicted in absentia in the Soviet Union in 1962 for war crimes and sentenced to death.

Last week, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III agreed to deport Linnas to Panama instead of the Soviet Union. But within 24 hours, the Central American nation withdrew its decision to grant Linnas asylum.

Meese had been prepared earlier this month to put Linnas on a flight bound for the Soviet Union but he gave the accused Nazi the chance to find another country. Before Panama, more than a dozen countries rejected his appeal.

Neal Sher, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, commended today’s Supreme Court decision.

“This case has been litigated for nearly eight years. Every claim he has made has been rejected by the courts, and judges have found the evidence overwhelming that he participated in mass executions,” Sher said. “The eventual deportation of Linnas sends the right message that the United States is not going to be a haven for Nazi war criminals.”

Eli Rosenbaum, legal counsel for the World Jewish Congress, said the decision is “very welcome indeed.”

“We remain cautiously optimistic,” Rosenbaum said, adding that he will not be completely satisfied “until Linnas is out of the country.”

Attorneys for Linnas, leading conservatives in the Reagan Administration including former communications director Patrick Buchanan and East European groups had argued that the case against Linnas was based on questionable evidence provided by the Soviet Union.

But Linnas, whose appeals have repeatedly been turned down by U.S. courts since 1979, was temporarily moved April 2 to a detention facility at Kennedy International Airport in New York in preparation for his deportation.