STRASBOURG, December 21 (RIA Novosti) - The European Court of Human Rights has acknowledged the admissibility of a Russian World War II veteran's complaint against Latvian authorities, the plaintiff's lawyer said on Friday.
Vasily Kononov, 84, who led a guerrilla party in the Baltic state during WWII, was convicted by Latvian authorities of ordering the killing of nine villagers in 1944, with some reports saying the dead included a pregnant woman.
Kononov admitted the killings, but said the dead were Nazi collaborators, and had been caught in cross-fire. The republic was under Nazi occupation at the time of the incident.
Mikhail Yoffe, who acts for Kononov and other WWII veterans at the European Court of Human Rights, said the court had accepted the veteran's complaints on the basis of the European convention on human rights, which says people cannot be convicted for crimes which were not considered as such by national or international law at the time they were committed.
A retired police colonel born in Latvia, Kononov was arrested in 1998 and sentenced to six years in prison in 2000 on genocide charges. In 2004, after several years of litigation, his sentence was cut to 20 months in prison and the charges changed to "war crimes." Kononov filed an appeal with the court in Strasbourg the same year.
Russia subsequently brought pressure to bear on Latvian and European authorities over the case, and in April 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin granted Kononov Russian citizenship.
Yoffe said the court had suggested the defense should provide an estimate for moral and financial compensation. The lawyer said he estimated suitable damages at five million euros. The decision on the admissibility of the appeal is to be followed by a judgment in the case.
"If [the Strasbourg court] finds that the law was violated, this means that Kononov's conviction was illegitimate, and we can expect his exoneration," the lawyer said. Yoffe said his client regarded the court's preliminary decision as a 'victory' in itself.
"This is complete victory, one I have sought for eight long years," Latvia's Russian-language newspaper Telegraf quoted Kononov as saying on Friday.
While Russia maintains that the Red Army liberated the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia from Nazi invaders, many local residents fail to distinguish between the Nazi and later Soviet periods. The Strasbourg court held an initial hearing on the case on September 20, earlier than planned due to Kononov's deteriorating health. A decision on its admissibility was made on December 17.
