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Rights Court Assails Russia Over Inquiry of 1940 Massacre Poland Calls Ruling on Katyn Massacre ‘Disappointing’
(about 4 hours later)
LONDON — In the long-simmering and emotional debate over a notorious mass killing during World War II, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Monday that Russia had failed to comply with its obligations to adequately investigate the massacre of 22,000 Polish officers by the Soviet secret police in 1940. LONDON — In the long-simmering and emotional debate over a notorious mass killing during World War II, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Monday that Russia had failed to comply with its obligations to adequately investigate the massacre of more than 20,000 Polish prisoners of war by the Soviet secret police in 1940.
The ruling by the court’s highest panel, the Grand Chamber, came after relatives of the victims complained that a lengthy Russian inquiry had been ineffective and the Russian authorities had displayed a dismissive attitude to requests for information about the event, known as the Katyn massacre, which occurred near Smolensk. But the court said it had no jurisdiction over the massacre itself or on the subsequent treatment of the relatives of the dead, prompting an outcry in Poland and expressions of satisfaction among officials in Moscow, underscoring the deep and lingering divisions inspired by the mass killing in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk.
The Grand Chamber ruled unanimously that “Russia had failed to comply with its obligation” under the European Human Rights Convention to “furnish necessary facilities for examination of the case,” according to a statement from the court in Strasbourg. “We are rather disappointed by this verdict,” said Poland’s deputy foreign minister, Artur Nowak-Far, according to Agence France-Presse. “The ruling does not take into account all the arguments of the Polish side that have here a great moral and historic right.”
The ruling confirmed in part a decision by a lower chamber made public in April 2012. But it differed from the earlier verdict by saying there had been no violation of Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment as it relates to the suffering of families of “disappeared” people, subject to “a long period of alternating hope and despair.” Andrzej Melak, president of the Association of the Families of Katyn Victims, called the judgment “scandalous,” adding that it was “inadmissible and incomprehensible.”
In the Katyn case, the court’s jurisdiction only covered the period starting in May 1998, when the convention came into effect in Russia. “After that date,” the ruling said, “no lingering uncertainty as to the fate of Polish prisoners of war remained.” “The failure to condemn this genocide and the impunity of its perpetrators led to it being repeated in Rwanda, the Balkans and it will be repeated again,” he said. “Poles will not accept a ruling like this.”
The 2012 ruling said that Article 3 had been violated for 10 of the 15 Polish family members in the case. Both the 2012 finding and the ruling Monday said the European court had no jurisdiction to examine complaints in the case based on Article 2 of the convention, covering the right to life, because the massacre had taken place a decade before the convention became international law and 58 years before Russia acceded to it. But in Moscow, Georgy Matyushkin, the deputy minister of justice and its envoy to the European Court on Human Rights, told the Interfax news agency that the ruling showed that “the court does not have the conventional duty to investigate the events at Katyn” and that it would thus be “illogical” for it to address allegations of improper treatment of the victims’ relatives.
That period of time was too long for a “genuine connection” to be established between the killings and Russia’s accession to the convention, the Grand Chamber ruled on Monday. It rejected an application for “just satisfaction,” its usual basis for awarding damages. “The Russian authorities from the very beginning said that these events are located outside of the frame of the jurisdiction of the European court from the point of view of the time frame,” Mr. Matyushkin said. “And this point of view was accepted by the European court.”
The likely impact of the decision in Moscow seemed unclear. Russia acknowledged the responsibility of Soviet leaders for the massacre only in 1990, when military prosecutors opened a criminal investigation that was discontinued 14 years later. The Polish prisoners, including nearly 5,000 senior Polish Army officers, disappeared in late 1939 and early 1940 during a period of German-Soviet cooperation, when Soviet forces occupied eastern Poland. In April and May 1940, they were taken to the Katyn woods, near Smolensk, west of Moscow, where they were executed and then buried in mass graves there and in two other villages.
At that time, military prosecutors classified 36 out of a total of 183 volumes of files relating to the investigation as “top secret.” The full text of the decision to end the investigation was also classified as a state secret. After decades of denial, Russia admitted responsibility for the massacre in 1990, and opened a criminal investigation. The investigation was closed 14 years later, but much of its findings were classified and no one was publicly held responsible.
In its ruling, the Grand Chamber said Russia had not offered a “substantive analysis” for maintaining the classified status of the decision. “The court was unable to accept that the submission of a copy of the September 2004 decision could have affected Russia’s national security,” the ruling said. Relatives of the victims complained to the court in 2007 that that the Russian inquiry had been ineffective and that the Russian authorities had displayed a dismissive attitude to requests for information about the event. The case was brought by 15 Polish citizens who are relatives of 12 victims of the massacre —police and army officers, an army doctor and a primary school headmaster — according to court filings.
The massacre has long haunted Russian-Polish relations, evoking memories even in far more recent times. The court’s highest panel, the Grand Chamber, ruled unanimously that “Russia had failed to comply with its obligation” under the European Convention on Human Rights to “furnish necessary facilities for examination of the case,” according to a statement from the court in Strasbourg, France.
In April 2010, for instance, the Polish president’s plane crashed over Smolensk, killing him and 95 other members of Poland’s political and military elite. The disaster tore at the country, but what added a harsh resonance was the fact that the high-profile delegation had been traveling to a commemoration of the Katyn massacre. But the ruling said the court had no jurisdiction to examine complaints over the killings themselves because the massacre took place a decade before the rights convention became international law and 58 years before Russia acceded to it, in 1998.
In November 2010, the Russian Parliament approved a statement holding Stalin and other leaders responsible for the killings. That period was too long for a “genuine connection” to be established between the killings and Russia’s accession to the convention, the ruling said. The court rejected an application for awarding damages.
The court also ruled that there had been no violation of the convention’s provision prohibiting inhuman or degrading treatment as it relates to the suffering of families of “disappeared” people. That part of the ruling overturned a lower court’s ruling in 2012, which found that that provision had been violated in the cases of 10 of the 15 Polish family members.
In its ruling, the Grand Chamber said Russia had not offered a “substantive analysis” for keeping the decision to classify the decision to close its investigation. “The court was unable to accept that the submission of a copy of the September 2004 decision could have affected Russia’s national security,” the ruling said.
Nikita V. Petrov, a historian for the Memorial human rights group, which has sought to declassify the decision, called the ruling a “light reprimand” that would do nothing to further the investigation.
“It’s like telling a criminal, ‘You haven’t behaved yourself very well,'  ” he said. “But it does not say that a crime is still taking place, because the government is hiding information about past criminal activities like the Katyn case.”
The massacre has continued to haunt Russian-Polish relations.
In April 2010, a plane carrying the Polish president and 95 other members of Poland’s political and military elite to a commemoration of the massacre crashed over Smolensk, killing everyone on board. The crash led to mutual recriminations over an event intended to help heal the wound.
In November 2010, the Russian Parliament approved a statement holding Stalin and other Soviet leaders responsible for the Katyn killings.
Despite protests from Communist Parliament members, the State Duma acknowledged that archival material “not only unveils the scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders.”Despite protests from Communist Parliament members, the State Duma acknowledged that archival material “not only unveils the scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders.”

Alan Cowell reported from London, and Andrew Roth from Moscow.