REPUTED NAZI CAUGHT AT LAX, DEPORTED.

Byline: Associated Press 

A suspected Nazi war criminal implicated in the slaughter of thousands of Latvian Jews during World War II was deported to Australia after apparently trying to sneak into the United States, authorities said.

Konrads Kalejs, 84, an Australian citizen, arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Dec. 6, telling Immigration and Naturalization Service agents that he was just passing through on his way to Mexico.

But INS officials suspected he wanted to go to Mexico and sneak back across the border into the United States, where he lived for nearly 35 years before he was deported in 1994.

He was identified at the airport using a little-known ``watch list'' of 70,000 suspected or documented Nazi collaborators and sent back to Australia, officials said Thursday.

The list is compiled by the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which probes war-crimes allegations involving Nazis and their allies.

The Office of Special Investigations typically gets one call a week about suspected former Nazis or collaborators trying to enter the country, usually from the INS, said director Eli Rosenbaum.

``Most of these people are former SS,'' he said, referring to the notorious Nazi special police. ``If they deny having been in the SS, we instruct the INS agent at the scene to . . . ask him to take off his shirt - it's always men - and allow the agent to look under the left bicep. We're looking for the telltale blood-type tattoo the SS gave to most of its men.''

Kalejs was detained by INS officials for about 12 hours, then forced - at his own expense - to board a plane bound for Australia, Rosenbaum said.

Kalejs has denied being involved in Nazi-sponsored death squads, saying he was a university student or farm laborer during World War II. But in a 1993 opinion from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, he was called a company commander of the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police, a pro-Nazi unit that took part in the killings of thousands of Latvian Jews and other persecutions at the Salaspils labor camp.

Kalejs moved to Australia after Germany was defeated and became a citizen. He entered the United States in 1959.

Between 1959 and 1984, he became a financial success in the United States, amassing a fortune worth millions of dollars. When Justice Department investigators began closing in on him in 1984, he took $350,000 and escaped to Canada, the 7th Circuit said.

Kalejs tried to re-enter the United States under a new identity, but was arrested in April 1985 in Florida. After a lengthy court battle, he was deported to Australia on April 8, 1994.

Later that year, Kalejs was discovered in Toronto. He was eventually deported from Canada in August 1994, Rosenbaum said.