Ctirad Masin, a controversial anti-communist fighter in the former Czechoslovakia, has died. He was 81.
Czech public radio and television say Masin died Saturday in a war veteran sanatorium in Cleveland, Ohio, of an undisclosed illness.
Masin and his brother Josef were part of a resistance cell after the communists took power in Czechoslovakia in 1948. They killed two policemen while trying to capture arms in a police station, and 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 and later settled in the U.S.
Some Czechs consider them heroes, for others they are murderers. Prime Minister Petr Necas said Saturday Masin was a brave man.
