Latvian seeks £4m payout after being jailed for killing Nazi sympathisers

[orieleye]

Vasiliy Kononov during the war

More than 60 years after the end of World War Two, a man is to be judged by Europe's highest court on whether he was right or wrong to kill Nazi sympathisers collaborating with Hitler.

Latvian Vasiliy Kononov, 85, is claiming compensation of £4 million for being convicted and sentenced to six years imprisonment by his own country in 2001 for the unlawful killing of civilians who had betrayed a partisan group to the Germans.

Kononov, a guerrilla attached to the Soviet Red Army, helped kill the civilian collaborators after tricking them into admitting they had handed the partisans over to the Nazis.

Years later courts in Latvia found him guilty of crimes against humanity.

But Kononov is claiming that he acted correctly in killing the nine civilians in a Latvian village in 1944, because at the time he was legitimately fighting with the Red Army, and on the side of the Allies including Britain, to repel the Nazis from the Baltic state.

He also claims that he is the victim of political correctness in modern day Latvia, a European Union country where the State now openly defends those who fought for the Nazis against the Soviet army in the Second World War.

The Latvians argue the Soviets were seen as the greater threat to the country's independence, and this justified siding with Hitler.

The verdict from the European Court of Human Rights, due next month, will effectively re-open the issue of war crimes during the Second World War as established under the Nuremberg trials, by deciding whether a man can be punished for fighting against the Nazis.

It is seen as a test case which could lead to other financial claims in eastern Europe.

'During the war, Kononov was a specialist mine layer who personally destroyed 14 German troop trains heading into his country,' said his lawyer Mikhail Joffe.

Vasiliy Kononov today aged 85 and his lawyer Mikhail Joffe who is taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights

In March, 1944 he was assigned to discover the fate of a partisan group of 12 men led by a Major Chugunov who disappeared near the village of Maliye Baty after being betrayed by villagers in the pay of the Nazis.

Disguised in a Nazi greatcoat, Kononov talked to villagers who boasted how they had betrayed the partisans.

Then Kononov and his men held a war court that convicted the villagers. The villagers were given a written judgement sentencing them to death.

Most were shot, although a man, and two women were in a building that Kononov set on fire and died in the flames.

In all, nine people were killed, including a child, which Kononov admitted was a mistake.

Kononov, who later became a police colonel in Latvia, was arrested in February 1998.

Convicted to six years, he spent 620 days in jail during which time his brother and son died. Kononov was not let out to the funerals.

Human rights lawyer Joffe then began the series of appeals that will end in Strasbourg next month.

The case brings into focus Latvia's contempt for the former Soviet Union after over four decades of occupation, with Kononov being cast as a Stalinist thug massacring civilians.

It hinges on whether the highly decorated former guerilla can be classified as a Soviet occupier of Latvia or as a Latvian citizen fighting the Nazi invaders.

'The Latvian courts agree that Kononov was a member of an anti-Hitler coalition, they do not dispute that,' said Joffe.

'They also agree that those villagers were in collaboration with Nazis.

'Yet they claim that Kononov was representing Soviet occupiers and killed the civilians who were acting according to the laws of that time.

'But this is nonsense. He is a native Latvian, he was fighting for his country.

'And according to the rules of war, people taking guns from invaders in exchange for food and protection were not civilians anymore, but collaborators.

'This process is purely political like other things Latvia has been doing recently - such as reburying Nazis as heroes, and organising monuments and eternal flames at Nazi cemeteries.'

Kononov, now 85, said : 'I have never doubted that I was fighting for the right thing.

'It was a shock for me to know that what I did to defend my country is now considered a crime.'

Source

[Marcus Marulus]

How dare he sue the state, given the fact that he was too mildly punished and not too harshly? He got only six years for killing nine people (non-soldiers), among whom there was one pregnant woman and a child.

In their earlier statements he and his lawyer claimed that his advanced age should save him from being put on trial, but it seems that his advanced age does not prevent him from being shameless.

[Gottslav]

To begin with he's not a Latvian. He's ethnic Russian, as far as I know. And holder of a Russian passport, so not a Latvian citizen.
I agree, he's a shameless old man. Take notice, that Jewish lawyer Joffe is coming to his help with the case. It seems, they are smelling such cases a mile off. He's having whole backing from Russian officials and government, who intend to make political statement out of this situation. The only goal is to punish fascist Latvian regime, of course!

[Routasydän]

I can imagine the Russian media having a field-day with this. "Fascist Latvia wants to imprison glorious liberator".

Sigh.

[Gottslav]

Originally Posted by wilpuri

I can imagine the Russian media having a field-day with this. "Fascist Latvia wants to imprison glorious liberator".

Sigh.

These were the exact headlines here.

[Routasydän]

Originally Posted by Gottslav

These were the exact headlines here.

Booya! Pravda is predictable.

[Gottslav]

Originally Posted by wilpuri

Booya! Pravda is predictable.

You bet

[Susi]

Defending his nation by shooting its people?

[Loorberitega Pärjatu]

Yes, Vasili is very typical 'LATVIAN' name . Efraim Zuroff wants to get every single man from Baltic Waffen-SS Legions to Israeli court but NKVD killers are sacred glorious liberators. One of the most known of them in Estonia was a guy named Idel Jakobson. Guess his nationality .

[Weltschmerz]

Originally Posted by Loorberitega Pärjatu

Yes, Vasili is very typical 'LATVIAN' name . Efraim Zuroff wants to get every single man from Baltic Waffen-SS Legions to Israeli court but NKVD killers are sacred glorious liberators. One of the most known of them in Estonia was a guy named Idel Jakobson. Guess his nationality .

Jewish? What happened to him and other Waffen SS deputies?

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Gnist

Jewish? What happened to him and other Waffen SS deputies?

Loorberitega Pärjatu said Idel Jakobson was one of NKVD killers and not SS-deputy.

[Weltschmerz]

Originally Posted by Marulus

Loorberitega Pärjatu said Idel Jakobson was one of NKVD killers and not SS-deputy.

My mistake then. I assumed, from all the smilies, that there should be something "funny" about it, but I don't get it.

[Loorberitega Pärjatu]

I found an interesting article, here's something to get the idea:

"As far as I know, only three persons were shot to death and later found in the well. All the others were tortured to death. They numbered about a hundred. Nobody knows the exact number. The methods of torture were numerous; one man had his lips cut of, another his nose, his tongue and his ears. Many had their feet boiled, someone one foot and others both feet. There were also victims from whose backs pieces of skin were cut out and who had their hands bound behind their backs with barbed wire. A few had their eyes cut out. One woman had her breasts cut of. I was there when the bodies were removed from the cellars. During the day thousands of people came to look for their loved ones. Many found them. It was a horrible sight, one I will never forget ".

The whole article: Communism and Crimes against Humanity in the Baltic states

[Llywarch Hen]

I live in Russia, and speak the language, and often read such stories on the net. Despite my general Russophilia, I don't doubt that that sort of thing DID happen on occasion. Same goes for the stories of rape and torture of German women as the offensive moved westward. I would just respectfully like to be referred to some source that I could accept as reasonably objective. Do you know of any?

[Routasydän]

Originally Posted by Gnist

My mistake then. I assumed, from all the smilies, that there should be something "funny" about it, but I don't get it.

I suppose the funnies is the double standards afforded to a Jewish NKVD "liberator" and the vile fascist "Nazis".

[Loorberitega Pärjatu]

Originally Posted by Llywarch Hen

I live in Russia, and speak the language, and often read such stories on the net. Despite my general Russophilia, I don't doubt that that sort of thing DID happen on occasion. Same goes for the stories of rape and torture of German women as the offensive moved westward. I would just respectfully like to be referred to some source that I could accept as reasonably objective. Do you know of any?

I guess most of the hard evidence traveled to Russia with KGB archives or was just burnt in 1991-92.

How is it not objective if people tell their stories in various books, documentaries, interviews etc? Are they liars? Or what should be the objective way to speak about someone who takes you away from your home and sends to die in totally strange land?

Those stories are written in local languages. They haven't been translated because nobody else cares. The USSR was great ally to Western powers during WWII, so it was better to keep silence.

Is it possible that the whole generation of a nation remembers falsely? Or maybe then the whole Baltic nations were "fascists" and deserved their destiny. But that hasn't even been said about the Germans - I mean that they'd been all nazis...

I am not exaggerating if I say that every family at least knew somebody who was deported. Those things really happened, it is no myth as some Russian chauvinists and their Finnish bootlicks want to say.