'Red partisan' on second trial for war crimes

  • 2002-05-23
  • Timothy Jacobs, RIGA
A second trial is underway in the Latgale Regional Court of "red partisan" Vitaly Kononov for alleged war crimes he committed in a small village in Eastern Latvia during World War II.

Riga Regional Court convicted Kononov, 78, of war crimes in January 2000 and sentenced him to six years in prison. But he only served four months of his sentence before being released on an appeal to the Latvian Supreme Court.

Taking Kononov's reportedly poor health into consideration, the Supreme Court ruled he should be released until the prosecution could produce more concrete evidence that the people whose deaths he is accused of orchestrating were civilians and not combatants.

Latvia's prosecutor general's office says it now has enough evidence, which was missing from the first trial, to proceed with a second one.

On the trial's first day May 20, Antonina Rubina, Monika Alu-nane, and Vitolds Skirmants told the court how, in May 1944, Kononov and a group of 17 other partisans under his command parachuted into their village of Mazie Bati and killed nine villagers - six men and three woman, one of whom was in her last month of pregnancy.

All nine of the villagers who were killed were either shot or burned to death.

The three witnesses were all children at the time, but they claim it was common knowledge around the village that it was Kononov, who lived for a time in a nearby village, who had organized the killings.

"Everybody knew it was organized by Vasjka Kononov, Makar's son," said Alunane.

During the first trial, Kononov's lawyer Aleksandr Ogur-covs fought the charges on a variety of counts, arguing that Ko-nonov was too old and sick to be tried, that the prosecutor was biased, and that what the prosecutors were calling "war crimes" were just military actions committed by a soldier in a time of war.

He argued that the six men killed in Mazie Bati were all armed combatants, and that one of them was a known Nazi collaborator.

The Russian government was highly critical of Latvia's decision to put Kononov on trial two years ago, and Moscow is keeping a close eye on the second trial as it unfolds. According to the Russian news agency Interfax, the country's human rights ombudsman Oleg Mironov asked the Latvian government to consider placing Kononov under Russia's jurisdiction in a letter sent May 20 to Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga.

Kononov, who is considered a hero by the Russian government for his role in fighting the Nazis who occupied Latvia during the war, was given Russian citizenship shortly before being released from prison in early 2000.

In a May 21 interview on Latvian radio, Vike-Freiberga left open the possibility that Kononov could be extradited to Russia after the trial. However, because the crimes that he is charged with occurred in Latvia, she said he would have to stand trial in a Latvian court.