On March 7 Parliament Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis met with Strobe Talbot, U.S. deputy secretary of state. Talbot took the opportunity to pay tribute to the Lithuanian Parliament for amendments to the criminal code. Representatives of Jewish-American organizations also approved this law in the meeting with Landsbergis.
The amendments were passed by Parliament on Feb. 15. They state that persons of ill health facing charges of genocide, deportation and other war crimes can give testimony and answer questions without having to appear in the courtroom. Either court officials will arrive at the defendant's place of residence or the defendants will take part in the hearing through a video broadcast.
The amendments were prepared by a parliamentary human rights committee led by Emanuelis Zingeris, Conservative MP and former chairman of Lithuania's Jewish community. The prosecutor general's office now has 84 cases dealing with genocide - 13 cases related with the Nazi occupation, the rest with the Soviet occupation. Most of the cases are sought because of specific crimes, some are against specific persons.
"If those people are not guilty the court will prove it," Zingeris said.
"It will open the way to justice," the left opposition Democratic Labor Party MP Algimantas Salamakinas said.
The amendments were passed mostly by votes of the right and left flanks of Parliament - Conservatives and Labor Democrats. The biggest critics of the amendments sit in between. They are the Center Union's parliamentary faction. One of its leaders, Egidijus Bickauskas, a lawyer, said that these amendments are the result of foreign pressure and make him feel as if somebody spits on him.
All MPs emphasized that these amendments have no precedent in any criminal code in international law. Some said it in a positive sense, some in negative.
"I'm critical about these amendments. Not a single European country has such a law. It was passed because of foreign pressure," National Democratic Party MP Rimantas Smetona said.
He added that this law reminds him of the Soviet practice of trials in absentia "when instead of the accused person, a sheet of paper with his name appeared in the court."
"Authors of the amendments say this law will also help now to put on trial those who hide in Israel, Russia and other countries, and who are suspected to be related to war crimes in Lithuania. But it is not true. The law says that suspected persons must be served a notice for a trial. Those who hide will not take this notice and will not be tried," Smetona said.
The Lithuanian prosecutor general's office wanted to question four persons in Israel, Russia and Germany about Soviet occupation regime crimes, but law institutions in these countries decisively refused to co-operate. The most famous persons of the shady Soviet past are Nachmanas Dusanskis, living in Israel, and Petras Raslanas, living in Russia. These people left Lithuania when it started to move towards the restoration of its independence.
The most famous suspect of Nazi occupation crimes is Aleksandras Lileikis. He was head of Lithuanian security forces in the Vilnius district during the German occupation. Smetona said that the amendments were passed only because of this particular person.
Several medical commissions stated that Lileikis cannot arrive in court because of poor health conditions.
"I can't imagine how an accused person can participate in a trial through a TV broadcast if he doesn't hear or cannot see properly," Smetona said.
Arvydas Anusauskas, a researcher with the Genocide and Resistance Center of Lithuania, took interest in Lileikis' past.
"In August 1941, Germans issued a ban for Lithuanian security to deal with cases of ethnic Jews and ethnic Germans. There is a document in Lileikis' case which states that 62 Jews were given up by Lileikis' office to the Germans in August 1941," Anusauskas said.
According to him, American investigators appealed to the KGB in 1981 asking for more information about Lileikis and got this document from KGB headquarters in Vilnius. The document has no signature.
"It is the accusation against Lileikis. There is a Jewish-American woman who says that Lileikis saved her during the Nazi occupation. There are witnesses who say that Lileikis helped to save more Jews. But all this has nothing to do with this case. Such witnesses can be just moral satisfaction for the accused person. But he must stand against concrete accusations that have been brought against him," Anusauskas said.
He said that he knew a person in Lileikis' office who was hiding Jews from Nazis, but later he was executed by the Soviets because of collaboration with the Germans.
Dalia Kuodyte, director general of the same research center, presented figures about dealing with genocide participants.
"In Soviet times 1,900 cases arose against Nazi collaborators in Lithuania. Some of these cases included several accused persons. All the accused were executed or spent long years in Soviet concentration camps," Kuodyte said, adding that many of the punished were also involved in the genocide of Jews.
Soviet perpetrators of genocide were officially considered to be heroes by authorities during the Kremlin's rule over Lithuania.
"Since 1990, in independent times, only one case about Soviet genocide was finished in Lithuanian courts. Three Soviet collaborators received prison sentences," Kuodyte said.
There are several persons accused of Nazi genocide by the Lithuanian prosecutor general's office, said prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevicius who investigates cases of genocide.
"Those of them who live in Lithuania are imports," Valentukevicius said. All of them lived peacefully for half a century in the West, mostly the United States, till they were deported.
The Lithuanian prosecutor general's office and Jewish organizations abroad have not accused anyone not deported from abroad or any persons who lived in Lithuania during this half-century, said Valentukevicius, Kuodyte and Anusauskas.
"There are only those locals who already were punished by concentration camps for their Nazi time activity," Anusauskas said.
Valentukevicius refused to make a prognosis when the first trial in absentia might take place. "It the court's business," Valentukevicius said.
Authors of the amendments believe the improved law will help to deal with genocide cases.
"I was working on these amendments in the parliamentary human rights committee. Justice must be done even if the accused is not able to be in the courtroom. It is a moral case, first and foremost,"Arvydas Akstinavicius, MP of the Party Social Democracy 2000, said.
He explained that a trial in absentia can hand down only a verdict that doesn't carry a prison sentence. To be able to hand down a verdict related with imprisonment, the court must wait till the accused becomes healthy enough to stand charges in the courtroom, according to the amendments.
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