Strasbourg sides with Nazis

 The European Court of Human Rights has upheld the Latvian conviction of the Soviet anti-Nazi resistance veteran Vassili Kononov on trumped-up war crimes charges.    The reaction in Russia is nothing short of outrage. The Lower House’s deputy foreign affairs head Leonid Slutski describes the ruling as political and deliberately timed to closely coincide with the 65th anniversary of Allied Victory over Nazi Germany. The chief Russian delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Konstantin Kosachov  warns of a dim Russian view of the Strasbourg Court. A statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry says the Strasbourg ruling is likely to encourage far-right radicals who side with the wartime opponents of Mr Kononov.      

Head of Kononov’s defence team Mikhail Ioffe points out that convicting the veteran under the Latvian law as of 1944  is tantamount to convicting him from the standpoint of the Nazis. He also calls attention to a dangerous precedent created by the Strasbourg ruling:"Amazingly, the court has yielded to 19 years of Latvian demands to revise the Nuremberg decision not to question the action of the victorious Allied Powers in the Second World War. Being at variance with Nuremberg, the Strasbourg ruling is illegal and cannot be allowed to stand. "

Backed by the Russian representative at the Strasbourg Court Deputy Justice Minister Georgi Matyushkin, Mr Ioffe warns of grave dangers if anyone is allowed to try to destroy the legal legacy of the postwar tribunal in Nuremberg.     In 1998, a Latvian court found Kononov guilty of killing civilians. He denied the charge, saying his guerilla unit was eliminating collaborators with the Nazis. Two years later, after being released from jail on old age and health grounds, Kononov took out a Russian passport  and started lodging complaints which finally landed his case in Strasbourg. His defence team there is now working to overturn the latest ruling, arguing that if left unchanged, it would open up a Pandora’s Box of unholy designs to whitewash and exonerate Nazis.