Envoy: Russians no longer saying Wallenberg died of natural causes

Wallenberg

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) -- Russia has stopped saying that Swedish wartime diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, long feared murdered in prison, died a natural death while in Soviet hands, a Swedish diplomat said on Tuesday.

Wallenberg is credited with taking great personal risks to save some 100,000 Hungarian Jews from German death camps during World War II. But his fate has remained a mystery since he was taken to Soviet headquarters when the Red Army occupied Hungary in 1945.

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"We have had many discussions with the Russians over the years, and they have long since given up maintaining the official line that he died of a heart attack," Ambassador Jan Lundvik, who is investigating the case, told Reuters.

Lundvik is responsible for the Swedish side of a joint investigation with the Russians into Wallenberg's fate.

Former Soviet officials alleged for years that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack in 1947, when he would have been about 35. But testimony of ex-prisoners suggested he was still alive in the 1950s, and rumors hinted that he was still in prison in the 1970s, when he would have been in his 60s.

Swedish tabloid Expressen on Tuesday quoted another Swedish official as saying the Russians acknowledged that Wallenberg was probably murdered.

"From the Russian side it was claimed as early as 1957 that (Wallenberg) was found dead in his cell in the Lubyanka (prison) in 1947 and that's still what they say though they now admit that he probably didn't die a natural death but that his life was taken," the paper quoted a letter as saying.

It said Monica Lovstrom, a political counselor in the office of Prime Minister Goran Persson, had written the letter to a private individual concerned in the Wallenberg case. Her office said that Lovstrom was on holiday until August 4.

The joint inquiry is expected to publish its findings in November.

Wallenberg issued passports to Jews while he worked as a diplomat in Budapest, helping them emigrate to neutral Sweden.

Reports surfaced that he had been tried for espionage, but Moscow denied knowledge until in 1957 it released a doctor's note with the 1947 heart attack report.

"We have a number of indications that Wallenberg was murdered in 1947, and there are also indications that he was still alive after 1947," Lundvik said.

"The final evaluation of these indications is one of the remaining tasks for the working group," he added.

Lundvik said it was unlikely that any Soviet official would have arrested and detained a foreign diplomat without a direct order from or tacit knowledge of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

The working party discovered references in Soviet documents to the Wallenberg case being "closed" in 1947.

"This reference opens in principle one of three possibilities. That he was set free, executed or allowed to survive with a changed identity in the Gulag," Lundvik said.

"It is this last possibility that may have given rise to the many reports that he was seen alive at later dates. We have deployed large resources to check these reports but so far without any firm conclusions."

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