Ins to Institute Proceedings Against Ex-nazis in the U.S.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has announced it will institute proceedings to deport three aliens living in the United States and strip four U.S. naturalized citizens of their citizenship as a result of investigations of alleged murder and atrocities primarily against Jews in Eastern Europe, before and during World War II.

The INS declined to identify the seven pending formal start of the legal proceedings. A spokesman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the deportation actions will begin in about a month. The INS will submit documentation to the Department of Justice within 60 days for denaturalization moves.

The INS said its decision to act against the alleged Nazi war criminals followed the return from Israel of Paul Vincent, the INS chief trial attorney who interviewed 32 potential witnesses and obtained signed affidavits from all of them. In addition, all 32 indicated willingness to come to the United States to testify in person, the INS said.

Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D.NY) described the INS action as “a very important development,” and “particularly gratifying” since it is “apparently the direct consequence of my insistence that the INS seek witnesses and documentation in these cases from sources in the State of Israel.”

She added, “Although the actions do not make up for nearly 30 years of immigration service delay and neglect, they do offer the hope that the United States will no longer be a haven for persons accused of some of the most atrocious crimes in human history.”

SIX EX-NAZIS IDENTIFIED

Although the INS refused to identify the seven, six of them have been named by other sources as:

Andrija Artukovic, 76, of Surfside. California, former Minister of Justice and Internal Affairs in the Nazi puppet regime of Ante Pavelic in Croatia, who was charged by the post-war Yugoslav government with the murder of thousands of Jews, Serbs and gypsies; Boleslaus Maikovskis, 72, of Mineola, N.Y., who was sentenced to death in absentia by a Riga court on murder charges.

Also, Karl Linnas, 57, of Greenlawn, N.Y., who was sentenced to death in absentia in the Soviet Union for murders committed while he was administrator of the Nazi concentration camp at Tartu. Estonia; Edgars Laipenieks, 63, of San Diego, who is accused of killings in the central prison of Riga in 1941; Edmunds Gustaf Macs (also Match, Macz), 72, of Seattle, who has been charged with complicity in wartime murders in Lumbazu, Latvia; and Sergei Kovalchuk (also Kowalczuk), 50, of Philadelphia, accused of complicity in the killing of Jews in Lubomil, the Ukraine.