ECHR - KGB killings of Lithuanian partisans not a genocide
2015-10-21 BNS/TBT Staff/VILNIUS
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled the KGB murders of Lithuanian partisans was not an act of genocide.
The ruling may become an important legal precedent in the evaluation of Soviet atrocities
The ECHR ruled that former KGB officer, Vytautas Vasiliauskas, had been sentenced in Lithuania in June 2011 "on legal provisions that had not been in force in 1953.”
In charging Vasilauskas with genocide, the ECHR said Lithuania had violated the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects people against the retroactive application of law.
The Kaunas District Court found Vasiliauskas guilty of genocide, sentencing him to four years in prison. However, he is not serving the sentence due to illnesses and old age.
Vasiliauskas was sentenced for participating in the deportation of Lithuanian resistance fighter Jonas Burininkas.
Lithuanian courts ruled the case contained sufficient evidence to prove Vasiliauskas worked in repressive Soviet organisation aimed to destroy anti-Soviet partisans.
Via a communication, the ECHR said the case "did not provide much historical or factual account as to how the Lithuanian partisans were representing the Lithuanian nation.
"The court is not convinced that at the relevant time, the applicant, even with the assistance of a lawyer, could have predicted that the killing of Lithuanian partisans would constitute an act of genocide against Lithuanian nationals or of ethnic Lithuanians."
In 2014, Lithuania's Constitutional Court ruled that national courts may qualify deportations and repressions carried out by the KGB during the guerrilla war as genocide.
It added the repressions and deportations were proof the Soviets aimed to destroy a significant part of the Lithuanian nation.
After World War II, about 20,000 guerrillas died in Lithuania in anti-Soviet combat following the Soviet occupation in 1944.
Active guerrilla resistance ended in 1953.
http://www.baltictimes.com/echr_-_kgb_killings_of_lithuanian_partisans_not_a_genocide/ 
