RIGA — A former Latvian Red partisan lost a European Court of Human Rights appeal against a conviction for burning a family alive in their home during the Second World War in eastern Latvia.
Vasily Kononov, an ethnic Russian born in a Latgale village in 1923, was convicted in 2004 by the Latvian government of crimes against humanity for the ordering the partisan group under his command to [private_supervisor]burn three members of the Krupniks family alive in their house — a man named Mikhail, his nine-months pregnant wife Tekla and her mother Veronika. Four other men in the Krupniks’ village were executed by the partisans for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis.
The case, which highlights a major disagreement between the commonly-held Russian (liberation) and Baltic (occupation) interpretations about the Soviet triumph in WWII, caught the attention of the Russian government, and the Moscow municipal government agreed to pay the legal fees for the 87-year-old Kononov’s legal defense.
“We were not indifferent to Mr Kononov’s fate from the beginning,” Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told a Russian Nation Congress in January. “This case carries a provocation and political character and is part of a dirty campaign to discredit a war veteran.”
However, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the conviction after initially considering it unauthorized.
Legal analysts say the ruling opens the door for further prosecutions of members of WWII-era partisan groups for human rights crimes, as the Geneva Convention only applies to enlisted soldiers. [/private_supervisor] [private_subscription 1 month]burn three members of the Krupniks family alive in their house — a man named Mikhail, his nine-months pregnant wife Tekla and her mother Veronika. Four other men in the Krupniks’ village were executed by the partisans for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis.
The case, which highlights a major disagreement between the commonly-held Russian (liberation) and Baltic (occupation) interpretations about the Soviet triumph in WWII, caught the attention of the Russian government, and the Moscow municipal government agreed to pay the legal fees for the 87-year-old Kononov’s legal defense.
“We were not indifferent to Mr Kononov’s fate from the beginning,” Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told a Russian Nation Congress in January. “This case carries a provocation and political character and is part of a dirty campaign to discredit a war veteran.”
However, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the conviction after initially considering it unauthorized.
Legal analysts say the ruling opens the door for further prosecutions of members of WWII-era partisan groups for human rights crimes, as the Geneva Convention only applies to enlisted soldiers. [/private_subscription 1 month] [private_subscription 4 months]burn three members of the Krupniks family alive in their house — a man named Mikhail, his nine-months pregnant wife Tekla and her mother Veronika. Four other men in the Krupniks’ village were executed by the partisans for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis.
The case, which highlights a major disagreement between the commonly-held Russian (liberation) and Baltic (occupation) interpretations about the Soviet triumph in WWII, caught the attention of the Russian government, and the Moscow municipal government agreed to pay the legal fees for the 87-year-old Kononov’s legal defense.
“We were not indifferent to Mr Kononov’s fate from the beginning,” Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told a Russian Nation Congress in January. “This case carries a provocation and political character and is part of a dirty campaign to discredit a war veteran.”
However, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the conviction after initially considering it unauthorized.
Legal analysts say the ruling opens the door for further prosecutions of members of WWII-era partisan groups for human rights crimes, as the Geneva Convention only applies to enlisted soldiers. [/private_subscription 4 months] [private_subscription 1 year]burn three members of the Krupniks family alive in their house — a man named Mikhail, his nine-months pregnant wife Tekla and her mother Veronika. Four other men in the Krupniks’ village were executed by the partisans for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis.
The case, which highlights a major disagreement between the commonly-held Russian (liberation) and Baltic (occupation) interpretations about the Soviet triumph in WWII, caught the attention of the Russian government, and the Moscow municipal government agreed to pay the legal fees for the 87-year-old Kononov’s legal defense.
“We were not indifferent to Mr Kononov’s fate from the beginning,” Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told a Russian Nation Congress in January. “This case carries a provocation and political character and is part of a dirty campaign to discredit a war veteran.”
However, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the conviction after initially considering it unauthorized.
Legal analysts say the ruling opens the door for further prosecutions of members of WWII-era partisan groups for human rights crimes, as the Geneva Convention only applies to enlisted soldiers. [/private_subscription 1 year]
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