Suspected Nazi collaborator flees the U.S.

Supreme Court ruled 5th Amendment doesn't shield from prosecution abroad.

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- A suspected Nazi collaborator, denied the right to use the Fifth Amendment to shield himself from prosecution abroad, left the United States rather than testify about his World War II activities in Lithuania, the Justice Department said Sunday. The effort by Aloyzas Balsys, 86, to invoke the Fifth Amendment ended with a groundbreaking ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court last June. The justices said a defendant can't use the amendment's protection from self-incrimination to avoid prosecution outside the United States. Balsys had contended information required by a Justice Department subpoena would open him up to prosecution in Lithuania, Israel or Germany. He refused to answer the questions. The Supreme Court agreed with the federal trial judge's order that Balsys couldn't refuse to testify. The high court overturned an appeals court ruling that the Fifth Amendment protected him. "In light of the Supreme Court's decision, Balsys agreed to depart the United States permanently for Lithuania in order to avoid enforcement of the subpoena," a Justice statement said. Balsys, formerly of New York City, left Saturday. A settlement negotiated with the Justice Department required his departure by Sunday. Under the settlement, "Balsys conceded that he misrepresented and concealed his true wartime activities when he entered the United States," the department's statement said. A message left at a New York telephone listing for A. Balsys wasn't immediately returned. He arrived in the United States in 1961 from England and never took U.S. citizenship. He told U.S. immigration officials on his arrival that he served in the Lithuanian army from 1934 to 1940, then lived in hiding in that Baltic country until 1944. Eli M. Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, said historians on his staff had found documents showing that Balsys served with the Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian Security Police, the Saugumas, at least until 1943. He headed a Saugumas precinct office in Vilnius, Lithuania's capital. The Lithuanians acted as Gestapo surrogates, Rosenbaum said, and turned over to the Nazis Jews and Lithuanians who helped them. The Justice Department said almost 55,000 of Vilnius' 60,000 Jews were summarily executed at Panerjai, a wooded area near the capital, during the Nazi occupation. The Supreme Court's ruling in the Balsys case was cited by a federal judge in Florida in a case involving a Lithuanian found in contempt of court. Vytautas Gecas, 77, of Sunny Hills, Fla., was ordered to jail three weeks ago for refusing to testify about his wartime activities in his homeland. On the same day the Supreme Court ruled against Balsys, it refused to hear Gecas' appeal of an order to testify despite fearing prosecution in Lithuania, Israel or Germany. That decision by the high court let stand a 1997 ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. The appeals court held that Gecas couldn't invoke the Fifth Amendment if his prosecution were likely in a country not covered by the amendment.

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