The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Monday granted Latvia's appeal, overturning the court's decision of July 24, 2008 that found Vasily Kononov not guilty of the war-time killing of nine Latvian civilians in 1944. This reversal has set a dangerous precedent.
On May 27, 1944, Kononov and a group of other partisans killed nine residents of the Mazie Bati (Malye Baty) village suspected of collaboration with Nazis. Kononov spent nearly two years in a Latvian jail from 1998 to 2000 on charges of genocide.
In 2008, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Latvia violated the European Convention on Human Rights because the villagers' murder was not a crime under Soviet or international law at the time it was committed. The court referred to Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits retroactive punishment for crimes.
Article 7 of the convention reads: "No one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the time when it was committed."
When the Grand Chamber ruled on Monday that there had been no violation of Article 7, it opened a legal Pandora's Box. The ruling clears the way for criminal cases to be opened against hundreds and thousands of people who violated human rights as we understand them today while fighting for a noble cause - such as the fight against Nazism - in the past.
The guerrilla war that Soviet partisans waged against the German army in World War II was among the most merciless and dramatic events in human history. It claimed the lives of adults and children alike. Not even the unborn were spared, as in Malye Baty, where a woman who was nine months pregnant was killed. Kononov says he was not present at the woman's killing and that the witnesses against him were 3-5 years old at the time.
Children were also killed during the British and American bombing of German cities in 1944 and 1945, but no one blames the pilots.
Until recently, it was generally accepted that partisans in the former Soviet Union and the Allied pilots alike were fighting to bring a rapid end to the war, humanity's greatest inhumanity. In war, children can be killed and the perpetrators cannot be punished. What can be more inhuman than that?
There very well could have been children in the 14 trains derailed by Kononov's group, but what was the alternative? What would have happened to millions of other children if the Germans had received the ammunition, food and other supplies on those trains? What would have happened if Germany had defeated the Soviet Union and turned the full force of its aggression on Britain and the United States? What if Germany had been free to help its ally, Japan, which was killing Chinese children at Nanjing?
I doubt that any of the 14 Grand Chamber judges who passed judgment on Kononov ever had to make a choice as horrible as the choices Kononov's partisans were confronted with every day of the war. They killed compatriots, former friends and even relatives to save human civilization.
Kononov explained that he refused to take part in the reprisal against the alleged Nazi collaborators because he was from a neighboring village, and he feared that people from Malye Baty would turn their wrath on his parents. Almost all his relatives were later deported to Germany that used forced labor.
Judge not, lest ye be judged. This biblical truth applies to the participants in those tragic events above all.
By trying to reflect modern realities, the European court turned a blind eye to the historical circumstances, the motives and intentions of a growing number of defendants from the communist past of Latvia, Estonia and Poland. However, Roman law was based on a defendant's motives and intentions. By judging people who allegedly committed a crime in the 1940s according to the laws and moral norms of the 21st century, judges run the risk of committing the sin of hypocrisy.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Dmitry Babich)
