Vasiliy Kononov, a Russian partisan accused of leading a group of men who in 1944 killed nine unarmed villagers in Latvia, was indeed a war criminal, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.

The May 17 decision by the court’s Grand Chamber overturns a 2008 ruling by the court that while Kononov might have been involved in the World War II killings, there was no basis in law for charging and convicting him for war crimes.

Kononov, who was born in Latvia in 1923,  was accused of leading a group of Red Partisans who, wearing German uniforms, in May 1944 entered the village of Mazie Bati and, after finding German weapons hidden in several homes, shot a number of men and set fire to several buildings with people inside. In all, nine villagers—including three women, one of whom was pregnant—were killed.

The Latvian Foreign Ministry sees the decision as confirmation of the international legal principle that war crimes do not have a statute of limitations, a ministry spokesperson said in a May 17 press release. The ministry also condemned what it said were efforts by Russia to influence the court, including inappropriately revealing how justices voted before the opinion was published.

The Russian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, blasted the Grand Chamber’s ruling. The decision agrees with those who would rewrite history and want to whitewash the Nazis and their collaborators, according to a statement from Moscow.

Two years ago, the court in a 4-3 decision awarded Kononov EUR 30,000 in compensation after ruling that the ex-soldier’s actions may not have amounted to war crimes given the law at the time. Kononov had appealed his conviction in Latvia, claiming it violated Article 7 of the European Convention, which prohibits persons from being found guilty for acts that were not considered criminal offences at the time they were committed. In 1944, the only clear international law governing war crimes was the Hague Convention of 1907, and neither Latvia nor Russia were signatories to that document.

Latvia appealed the decision to the court’s Grand Chamber, which on May 17 ruled 14-3 that Article 7 had not been violated.

In its opinion issued in Strasbourg, France, the Grand Chamber ruled that by 1944 various rules and customs governed the conduct of war and defined what constituted a war crime. Even if the residents of Mazie Bati could be considered combatants rather than civilians—because of the weapons found in the village—they should have received some protection from the Red Partisans.

“As combatants, the villagers would also have been entitled to protection as prisoners of war under the control of the applicant and his unit and their subsequent ill-treatment and summary execution would have been contrary to the numerous rules and customs of war protecting prisoners of war,” according to a press release announcing the court’s decision. “Therefore, like the Latvian courts, the Court considered that the ill-treatment, wounding and killing of the villagers had constituted a war crime.”

The court added that given the laws and customs governing war, Kononov as the commanding officer should have known that his unit’s actions would constitute a war crime for which he could be held accountable.

The Grand Chamber’s decision is final.

An airBaltic flight from Rīga to Berlin landed May 14 at its destination without problems after the airline received a bomb threat, officials said.

Flight BT217 landed five minutes ahead of schedule at 12:30 p.m. local time, an airBaltic spokesperson said in a press release posted on the airline’s Web site.

“All the 74 passengers and four crew are in safety outside the aircraft and they follow security instructions and procedures by law enforcement bodies,” according to the press release.

The flight on a Fokker 100 aircraft left Rīga at noon local time headed for Tegel Airport in Berlin. Latvian authorities informed German police that an anonymous caller had claimed a bomb was on board the aircraft, according to news reports.

The Associated Press reported that German authorities took the aircraft to a secured area at Tegel Airport and were questioning passengers.

The flight was operated by airBaltic partner Blue Line, a French airline.

Restrictions on dual citizenship, including language that gave exiles until just 1995 to reclaim their Latvian citizenship, are constitutional, the nation’s Constitutional Court has ruled.

The court announced its ruling May 13, ending a challenge to the citizenship law by the Supreme Court and perhaps dashing the hopes of a Latvian family in Germany whose case led to the constitutional question.

However, the Constitutional Court also noted that the restriction on dual citizenship is essentially a political question, not one to be decided on legal considerations, court spokeswoman Līna Kovalevska said in a press release.

“Therefore the overall question about allowing dual citizenship should be decided by lawmakers or by the citizens,” she added, echoing the court’s written opinion.

The Constitutional Court heard the case on April 13 and had 30 days in which to issue an opinion.

In August, Latvia’s Supreme Court justices said that in their opinion rules barring dual citizenship are unconstitutional and asked the Constitutional Court to look into the matter.

The Supreme Court has been considering the case of Baiba Lapiņa-Strunska and Viktors Strunskis and their daughter, Rauna. The three are German citizens but also understood themselves to be Latvian citizens based on pre-1991 passports issued by Latvia’s legations in exile. However, when they tried to register as Latvian citizens in Rīga, officials of the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (Pilsonības un migrācijas lietu pārvalde, or PMLP) told them they first would have to renounce their German citizenship.

When Latvia regained independence in 1991, the government allowed pre-World War II citizens and their descendants to renew Latvian citizenship without giving up the citizenship of their home countries. The “transitional rule” expired in July 1995 and since that time it has not been possible for Latvians to obtain dual citizenship.

Lapiņa-Strunska and Strunskis challenged the rule and sued the PMLP.

Lapiņa-Strunska, reached by e-mail shortly after the decision was announced, declined to comment immediately. However, she said she had expected the result.

Lapiņa-Strunska has said the ban on dual citizenship is unfair and runs counter to modern European practice. The 1995 deadline, she has said, did not give enough time for many exile Latvians and their descendants to learn of the possibility of dual citizenship and to take care of the paperwork. Tens of thousands of potential Latvian citizens, Lapiņa-Strunska has said, were denied the chance to become dual citizens.

The Constitutional Court disagreed, noting that the window for claiming dual citizenship was about three and a half years.

“There is no reason to believe that persons who really wanted to renew Latvian citizenship in all this time had no chance to take care of registration,” the court’s opinion stated.

Under the transitional rule, Latvian citizens and their descendants who from June 17, 1940, until May 4, 1990, left the country as refugees or were deported, and who during that time had become naturalized in another country, until July 1, 1995, could also register as Latvian citizens. After the deadline, persons wanting to become Latvian citizens must renounce their existing citizenship.

According to PMLP data, a total of 30,793 persons registered as Latvian dual citizens. Of those, 12,473 were from the United States; 4,283 from Australia; 3,788 from Canada; 2,759 from Great Britain; and 1,615 from Germany.