Walter Linse

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Walter Linse (23 August 1903 – 15 December 1953) was a German human rights lawyer and Acting President of the Association of Free German Jurists an organization with links to the CIA.

In the early 1950s he was actively involved in uncovering human rights violations in the Soviet occupation zone such as arbitrary arrests, secret trials, and detention in labor camps. On the 8th July 1952, he was kidnapped by the East German Ministry for State Security Stasi held in Hohenschönhausen prison, then handed over to the KGB and eventually executed in the Butyrka prison in Moscow.

According to a Life Magazine article dated 28 July 1952 he was kidnapped from outside his home on Gerights Strasse American occupation zone of Berlin where at around 7.30am he was assaulted and bundled into a car. A woman who witnessed the event cried out for help and a lorry (truck) driver gave chase. The kidnappers in the car fired shots at the lorry (truck) with a pistol and dropped caltrops to deter the chase and the car escaped into the Soviet occupation zone of Berlin with a vehicle barrier being raised to help speed the escape, note that the Berlin Wall was not constructed until 1961 so travel between the zones was still relatively unhindered at this time.

The Life article quoted part of a response to the kidnapping from Neues Deutschland a communist supported paper, translated in Life as "Linse....got lost. Not a single agent of war-mongering imperialism will be safe, wherever he hangs out - be it West Berlin, Bonn, Paris or even Washington."

A police press statement made on the 13th of July identified and named 4 male kidnappers and 13 other accomplices who were involved in the kidnap which they alleged were all criminals in the employ of the Ministry for State Security also known as the Stasi.

After his death the International Commission of Jurists was set up in his memory and is now a significant human rights non-governmental organization specializing in supporting the rule of law across the world.

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