Deported Nazi Linnas Dies in Soviet Hospital

Karl Linnas, who was deported screaming and struggling from the United States in April to face a 1962 death sentence for Nazi war crimes in the Soviet Union, died today of heart failure in a Leningrad hospital, Tass press agency reported.

Linnas, 67, a retired draftsman and land surveyor from Greenlawn, N.Y., had been imprisoned in his native Estonia since April. He was transferred to a Leningrad hospital last Thursday for treatment of a peptic ulcer and other unspecified illnesses, Tass said.

Family members had been notified that his condition had deteriorated and had come to the Soviet Union to be with him, Tass said.

Linnas was convicted in absentia in 1962 in an Estonian court of taking part in mass killings of Soviet nationals imprisoned at the Tartu concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Estonia. He was sentenced to death.

Tass said Linnas recently had undergone two operations. He had been taken to the Leningrad regional hospital from the Tallinn investigatory ward in Estonia’s capital.

Became U.S. Citizen

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said Linnas passed himself off as a displaced person in Germany after World War II. He later emigrated to the United States and became a citizen.

In 1982, Linnas was stripped of his citizenship on charges that he entered the country under false pretenses, and deportation proceedings began.

Linnas battled deportation for the next five years. But he was deported from the United States April 20 after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from his daughter.

In May, Linnas asked for a pardon because the acts he was found guilty of took place more than 40 years ago. Tass said June 25 that the appeal was being reviewed.

Linnas shouted to reporters at Kennedy Airport in New York before being deported that U.S. authorities were participating in “murder and kidnaping” by delivering him into Soviet custody.