Lawyer German Lukyanov, representing the Russian Imperial House in exile, said the Tverskoi District Court on May 25 made a ruling that ignored the request of Great Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, the head of the Russian Imperial House, to recognize Russia's last monarch as a victim of the Bolshevik repression and clear him of all political charges.
"I have asked the Tverskoi District Court to pass a follow-up judgment on a suit filed by Great Duchess Maria Vladimirovna," he said.
The Russian Imperial House has claimed that Nicholas II and his immediate family were killed following the Bolshevik revolution on government orders, and that their killing should consequently be classified as state-sponsored execution of political enemies.
On May 25, the court, however, ruled that it was a criminal act of murder and "there is no credible evidence proving the existence of any official decisions by judicial or non-judicial bodies to exert politically motivated repression" against the tsar or his family members, thus rejecting Lukyanov's appeal against the decision by the Prosecutor General's Office refusing to exonerate the royal family.
"The Russian Imperial House will use all the possibilities provided by the Russia Constitution to protect the law, justice, its own honor and the bona fide of the Romanov dynasty," Lukyanov said earlier. "The Prosecutor General's Office is unwilling to take into account the existence of legal documents submitted to it from archives of the FSB [Federal Security Service]."
He said the documents made it quite clear that Nicholas II and his immediate family, including his wife and their two children, had been executed by firing squad.
"These documents have been furnished by state bodies, and the fact that they are being neglected indicates a crisis in the rule of law in the country," said Lukyanov.
Previously, the lawyer also accused the prosecutors of double standards for refusing to recognize the killing of the emperor as a state-sponsored execution, citing a lack of evidence, while exonerating Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg based on the mere fact of his arrest in Hungary in 1945.
A new hearing is set for June 26.
The remains of Nicholas II, killed 1918 outside the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, were buried in 1998 with honors in the former imperial capital, St. Petersburg. The Russian Orthodox Church canonized him two years later.
Headed by Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, a daughter of the last grand duke in the Romanov dynasty, the Romanov Family Association advocates the revival of the Russian throne, suggesting that a new monarch should be elected by general vote of the Russian people, not necessarily from the Romanov-Gottorp line.
