Ctirad Masin | Communism fighter, 81

Ctirad Masin, 81, a controversial anticommunist fighter in the former Czechoslovakia who eluded a massive East Bloc manhunt during the Cold War, died Saturday at a war veterans' residence in Cleveland, Ohio, Czech public radio and television said.

Mr. Masin, his brother Josef, and Milan Paumer were part of a resistance cell after the communists took power in Czechoslovakia in 1948. They killed two police officers while trying to capture arms in a police station, and killed a cashier during a robbery to raise funds for their sabotage operations.

In 1953, they fled to the West, killing three police officers in East Germany during their epic escape as tens of thousands of police searched for them. Two other members of the cell were captured, sentenced to death, and executed.

The three later settled in the United States and served in the U.S. Army. Paumer returned home after the fall of communism and died last year. But the Masin brothers refused to go home because they said the country still had not fully rid itself of its communist past.

The Czechs are divided over them - while some consider them heroes, others call them murderers. In 1993, the nation split into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. - AP