Russia Today - 08.29.2002

Russia Today

Accused Nazi Gets Estonian Passport

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) -- An accused Nazi war criminal who fled the United States last month ahead of a federal court decision to revoke his citizenship has been issued an Estonian passport, officials said Thursday. 

Michael Gorshkow, 79, obtained a passport in person on July 15, said Citizenship and Migration Board Spokesman Heikki Kirotar. 

Gorshkow was born Mikhail Gorskov in Tallinn, the capital of this ex-Soviet Baltic republic. Because he was born in Estonia he is a citizen and entitled to a passport. 

A federal judge in Pensacola, Fla., stripped Gorshkow of his U.S. citizenship on July 31 for failing to respond to a Justice Department complaint that he did not disclose his wartime activities when he became a U.S. citizen in 1963. 

The Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations accused Gorshkow of helping to kill about 3,000 men, women and children in the Slutsk ghetto while serving as an interpreter and interrogator for the Gestapo in Minsk, Belarus. 

Justice Department officials said he fled the United States in July. 
Estonian prosecutors are analyzing documents related to Gorshkow's alleged crimes that they received from the U.S. Justice Department in June, but it was too early to say if he would face charges, said Ingal Lill, a spokeswoman for the State Prosecutor's Office. 

Government officials declined to confirm local media reports that Gorshkow was living in the country. 

The Tallinn office of the FBI has been monitoring Gorshkow but also refused to say whether he was living in Estonia, said U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Evelin Kookkota. 

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which tracks Nazi atrocities, is pressuring Estonian prosecutors to charge Gorshkow though his alleged crimes were committed in Belarus. 

"We call upon the Estonian government to bring Gorshkow to trial and to do so as quickly as possible," said Efraim Zuroff, head of the center's Jerusalem office.