Grave of Estonian president vandalized

TALLINN - Unknown vandals have sprayed the gravestone of Estonia'spre-WWII President Konstantin Pats with red paint in Tallinn's ForestCemetery.

Spokespeople for the area said the police were notified at 2:28 p.m. A teamof investigators has completed the necessary procedures on the scene.

A photographer of the daily Postimees present at the cemetery said the paintappeared rather fresh.

No other graves were affected.

The remains of Konstantin Pats were transported from a cemetery in Russiaand reburied in Tallinn's Forest Cemetery in 1990.

Following the Soviet invasion of Estonia in the summer of 1940, Pats wasarrested in his home and deported together with his family to the remoteRussian city of Ufa, where he lived as a deportee.

He was imprisoned the following year and spent his later years in severalclosed mental hospitals, dying in one such institution in Kalinin (now Tver) in1956.