New Katyn Case Opened at ECHR

A fifth Katyn case has been lodged at the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, with Russia's Chief Military Prosecutor accused of failing to clarify the circumstances of the fate of 20,000 Polish officers killed by Stalin’s security service (NKVD) in 1940.
 
The current, individual complaint has been made by the family of Jozef Dawda.
 
“My grandfather Jozef Dawda was an officer of the Polish police force stationed in the vicinity of Kolomea,” recounts Dariusz Dawda, who lives in Canada. .
 
“The Soviet Army arrested him there and sent him to a special NKVD camp at Ostaszkow.
 
“My grandmother, together with her two children, was deported to Siberia. She returned to Poland after the war, and for fifty years waited for some kind of information about the fate of my grandfather.
 
“She died soon after the Russians published the lists of the murdered officers,” he added, referring to Moscow's admission of guilt in 1990 that Stalin had ordered the executions of over 22,000 Poles.
 
Between 1990 and 2004, Russia conducted an inquiry into the crimes. However, only 137 of the 183 volumes were declassified and passed on to Poland.
 
The Katyn Families Association is campaigning for the the full rehabilitation of the murdered officers, a pleas which Russia appeared to agree to honour this year.
 
There remain several contentious issues, including Russia's refusal to classify the crimes as genocidal, and the lack of precise information regarding the whereabouts of the victims of two of the five so-called Katyn lists.