European court to rule on WWII dispute - UPI.com Quote:
STRASBOURG, France, June 27 (UPI) -- A Latvian who fought with Soviets against the Nazis is seeking damages for his conviction years after the fact for killing villagers who betrayed partisans.
Vasiliy Kononov, 85, has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, The Daily Mail reported. He wants $8 million in damages for his 2001 conviction, which led to his serving more than a year of a six-year sentence.
Like those of many people in Eastern Europe, Kononov's life has been turned around several times by shifting historical tides. His lawyer, Mikhail Joffe, said that during the war Kononov was personally responsible for blowing up 14 German troop trains.
In 1944, he was assigned to find out what had happened to a group of partisans in the village of Maliye Baty. Wearing a Nazi coat, he tricked a group of villagers into boasting of killing them and then helped execute the villagers.
One child was killed, which Kononov says was a mistake.
After the war, with Latvia part of the Soviet Union, Kononov rose to be a police colonel. But he was arrested in 1998 for the 1944 killings on the grounds that Latvians who collaborated with the Nazis were patriots trying to protect their country from the Soviets.* |
*And interesting interpretation!!