Moscow City Court orders to consider rehabilitation of Katyn massacre victims

A rare occasion -- good news from the official sources. RIAN press agency reports:

10.06.2008, 11.24

MOSCOW, June 10 (Itar-Tass) - The Moscow City Court on Tuesday overturned the decision by the city's Khamovniki court, which turned down the petition demanding rehabilitation of the Polish officers executed in Katyn. The Court thereby granted the injured parties' complaint.

"The case is being sent to the Khamovniki court for reconsideration," lawyer Anna Stavitskaya told Itar-Tass.

The issue of the Katyn tragedy has been opened for a long time. The first reports about mass graves of Polish servicemen in the Katyn forest near Smolensk appeared in 1943.

Some reports claimed the Polish prisoners-of-war were executed by firing squad back in the spring of 1940.

An international commission comprising specialists from Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, Croatia, Holland, Slovakia, Romania, Switzerland, Hungary, France and Czech republic, working under Nazi supervision, pointed the finger of blame at Russian secret service.

However, in January 1994, a Soviet commission led by academician N.Burdenko accused Germany of shooting the Poles.

In the late 1980, after the signing of the Soviet-Polish declaration on cooperation in ideology, science and culture, a Soviet-Polish commission was set up to investigate the issue.

In April 1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachyov passed to Poland the lists of prisoners-of-war (14,792 people).

Of course, this decision does not guarantee that the ruling will be positive and, moreover, that the organizers of the massacre will be officially proclaimed war criminals. However, this is first the step in the right direction since Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the Polish officers were murdered by NKVD and Boris Yeltsin visited the Powązki Cemetery.

See also my article on the Katyn massacre: April 13 in Russian history