Linnas in Soviet Hands, Goes to Estonia : Appeal Is Seen as a Possibility for Accused Nazi War Criminal

Karl Linnas, who lived in the United States for 36 years before being deported Monday, was taken into Soviet custody Tuesday and flown to the republic of Estonia, where he allegedly ran a Nazi death camp.

A spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry told reporters that Linnas, 67, might be able to appeal the death sentence imposed on him by a Soviet court that tried him in absentia in 1962.

Linnas, a retired draftsman who insists that he is innocent, was deported Monday from the United States after the Supreme Court rejected his effort to delay the action.

Tass, the official Soviet news agency, said Linnas was turned over to Soviet guards in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and put on board a special Aeroflot flight to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, one of the three Baltic republics of the Soviet Union.

According to Tass, Linnas commanded a World War II German concentration camp in Tartu, a city in Estonia, and supervised the killing of 12,000 men, women and children. Linnas has said he was a university student in Tartu.

Gennady I. Gerasimov, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Linnas could appeal his sentence if it was imposed by a military court and not confirmed by the Soviet Supreme Court. But he quickly added that he did not know if this is the case.

Tass said the “criminal cases collegium of the Supreme Court of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic” had found Linnas guilty of war atrocities and sentenced him to death in absentia in 1962. Tass made no mention of any possibility of appeal.

If there is no appeal, or if the sentence is upheld on appeal, Linnas will be executed by firing squad, according to Soviet custom.

‘Objective Attitude’

Although Soviet officials have frequently criticized the United States because of delays in the Linnas case, a Tass commentary praised the American judiciary for its role.

“The Soviet procurator’s office,” the news agency said, “told Tass that note should be taken of the objective attitude of the U.S. judicial authorities to the material in the Linnas case made available to the U.S. side by the Soviet Union (before Linnas was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1981).

“The decision of the U.S. authorities on deportation of Karl Linnas demonstrates that they (the Soviet and U.S. judiciaries) can be united in the just cause of bringing war criminals to justice.”

A U.S. Justice Department suit charged that Linnas had concealed his wartime activities when he came to the United States in 1951 and again when he was granted U.S. citizenship in 1960.

Fearing that Linnas might flee the country, U.S. authorities had kept him in prison in New York for the past year, until the courts decided his case.

Last week, Linnas tried, but failed, to find sanctuary in Panama. Tass said that he applied to 30 countries in an effort to find one that would accept him but that they all turned him down.

Vremya, the main evening television news program here, showed Linnas in New York, boarding a Czechoslovak airliner for Prague and then being transferred to a Soviet airliner for the flight from Prague to Tallinn.