Dealing with Gorbachev-era crimes

VILNIUS - On March 31, Sharon Stone and Kevin Spacey, wonderful actors and naive people, hosted a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London to honor former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev on his 80th birthday. Gorbachev and the hypocritical elite of Western politicians gathered for the event. On the eve of the event, London-based Russian writer and Soviet-era dissident Vladimir Bukovsky issued his appeal to a magistrate in Great Britain requesting the arrest of Gorbachev, accusing him of mass murders in Lithuania, Georgia and Azerbaijan in 1989-1991. The UK’s magistrate stated that Gorbachev is immune against persecution during his visit in London. Leonid Radzikhovsky, Moscow-based liberal political analyst who is usually neutral in fights between the current Russian regime and Russia’s small democratic opposition, stated to the radio Ekho Moskvy that it would be good to question Gorbachev about the Soviet-perpetrated massacres in Vilnius and the Lithuanian border post of Medininkai in 1991. Last week, Lithuania was dealing with both of these crimes.

On April 6, the Lithuanian parliamentary committee on legal affairs got a response from the Prosecutor General’s Office to the committee’s questions about the case of Soviet aggression of January 1991, when unarmed crowds of Lithuanians stood up in front of the Soviet tanks and paratroopers, stopping them from occupying the Lithuanian parliament, although 14 civilians were killed and some 1,000 injured when, on Jan. 13, 1991, the Soviets stormed the TV tower and the TV center in Vilnius. In January, 1991, the Kremlin sent elite Soviet army forces to Lithuania, such as the Alpha group, which was used for the first time in 1979 when the Soviets stormed the presidential palace in Kabul, marking the beginning of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

“The fact is that the system doesn’t work,” Stasys Sedbaras, chairman of the committee on legal affairs, stated about the Prosecutor General’s Office’s reply, adding that prosecutors have not acted in this case since 1994. “How can we look into the eyes of people who lost their sons or brothers in January 1991?” asked Parliament Speaker Irena Degutiene, expressing anger with the prosecutors’ passivity in the case. Prosecutors argue that all the organizers of the Soviet aggression are hiding in Russia and Belarus, which refuse to cooperate with Lithuanian prosecutors in this case.

However, progress has been made in the case of the Medininkai massacre. On July 31, 1991, customs officials Antanas Musteikis, Stanislovas Orlavicius, and Ricardas Rabavicius, policemen Mindaugas Balavakas, Algimantas Juozakas, Juozas Janonis and Algirdas Kazlauskas were killed by Soviet commandos at the Medininkai customs post, which was situated on the border between Lithuania and the USSR (now the Lithuanian-Belarusian border). According to prosecutors, the Soviet special force, called OMON (Russian abbreviation for the Special Purpose Militia Squad) estimated they had eight victims, but they had not expected Tomas Sernas, a customs official, to survive, and he is the main witness in the case which is pending in the Vilnius court now. Sernas, then a customs official and now a Calvinist priest in a wheelchair, had perforating wounds from Soviet bullets in both cerebral hemispheres, but he survived. The suspect in the Vilnius court trial is Latvian citizen Konstantin Mikhailov (in 1991, his surname was Nikulin), extradited by Latvia, this former member of the Delta group (special terrorist unit) in Riga’s OMON. Mikhailov denies his and the Delta’s participation in the massacre but prosecutors say that he was in the Medininkai post on the night of the massacre. Mikhailov is held in the Lukiskes Prison in Vilnius.

On April 6, prosecutor Saulius Verseckas asked the court to sentence Mikhailov to life imprisonment and a fine of three million litas (869,000 euros). “He was an accomplice to the crime,” Verseckas said after the court’s sitting. The trial is continuing in the Vilnius court.