Wanted By Nazi-Hunters Dies in Costa Rica

An Estonian alleged by Nazi-hunters to have murdered Jews during World War II has died in his adopted homeland Costa Rica aged 89, according to officials in the Baltic state.

Harry Mannil died Monday in the Costa Rican capital San José, Edgar Savisaar, mayor of Estonia's capital Tallinn and a close friend, said in a statement.

Savisaar paid tribute to Mannil, the godfather of his daughter, as an "outstanding expatriate Estonian businessman" and did not mention the accusations against him, dropped by Estonian prosecutors in 2005.

Mannil nonetheless remained on a wanted list drawn up by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish organization that tracks Nazi war criminals.

Mannil, then aged 21, was recorded as having served from September 1941 to June 1942 with the German security forces during the Nazi occupation of Estonia.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center accused him of involvement in the murder of 100 civilians, mostly Jews, although an Estonian probe only established that he was involved in interrogations.

The Nazi-hunters rejected as a whitewash a decision in 2005 by Estonian prosecutors to halt their five-year investigation on the ground that they had failed to turn up evidence to implicate Mannil in war crimes.

Mannil left for Finland in 1943, ahead of a Soviet takeover of Estonia. He emigrated to Latin America in 1946, a year after the end of World War II.

He spent the ensuing decades mostly in Venezuela, as well as Costa Rica. In 1994, the Simon Wiesenthal Center got him placed on a U.S. "watch-list" barring him from the United States.

Estonia's wartime history is still highly controversial.

Some Estonians saw the Nazis as the lesser evils, after German forces drove out Soviet troops who had occupied the country in 1940 and had deported thousands of Estonians to their deaths and were do so again after the war.

But the Nazis brought their own terror.

Estonia's pre-war Jewish population numbered some 4,400. Most fled before the Nazi invasion in 1941, but the 1,000 who remained in the country perished in death camps.

The Nazis also sent up to 10,000 Jews from other occupied countries to camps in Estonia, where most died.

The Red Army drove out the Nazis in 1944. Estonia remained a Soviet republic until the communist bloc collapsed in 1991.

Mannil, who in exile became a wealthy businessman and art collector, was appointed a foreign trade adviser by newly-independent Estonia's government.

He had first returned to Estonia in 1990 at the invitation of local Soviet leader Vaino Valjas, who had met Mannil while serving as Moscow's ambassador to Venezuela.

All articles in News

Add comment:

Subject:
Name:  
email:
Code: 

Remark:

Email not will be shown.

Tags forbidden.