A Vienna-based press freedom watchdog group says it is alarmed by the recent police raid on a Latvian journalist’s apartment in Rīga.

The home of Latvian State Television reporter Ilze Nagla was searched May 11 as police looked for evidence regarding the hacker “Neo,” who in recent months had revealed embarrassing information taken from the National Revenue Service’s computer system. Nagla had broken the story of the hacker, who since has been arrested and identified as Ilmārs Poikāns, a researcher affiliated with the University of Latvia’s Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science.

Police confiscated Nagla’s computer and storage media, according to news reports.

In a statement published May 18, the International Press Institute said it is “alarmed by the apparent disregard for source protection laws and press freedom demonstrated by the Latvian police in their investigation into the leak.”

According to reports, Poikāns had contacted Nagla with information about what he had found thanks to a security gap on the revenue service’s server. Using the name Neo and claiming to represent the People’s Army of the Fourth Awakening (4. Atmodas tautas armija), Poikāns also provided links to the data through a Twitter account.

His identity, however, did not become public until after the search of Nagla’s apartment.

“It is vital that investigative journalists seeking to provide the public with information be allowed to keep their sources confidential,” IPI Director David Dadge said in a statement published on the group’s website. “The search of Ilze Nagla’s house appears to be in blatant contradiction not only with the Latvian Press Act, but with the universal principle of a free media.”

A spokesperson for the Latvian Ministry of Interior said May 13 that the raid was not meant to uncover the journalist’s source, because police already knew the identity of Neo. Rather, the search of Nagla’s apartment was meant to uncover information regarding illegally obtained data about taxpayers.

Latvia typically ranks high on ratings of press freedom, but the search of Nagla’s apartment is at least the third incident this year that has raised concerns of watchdog groups. In January, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders condemned the ransacking by unknown intruders of the offices of Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze. The organization in April was “stunned” to learn of the apparent contract killing of Grigorijs Ņemcovs, publisher of the newspaper Million in Daugavpils.

As part of an effort to boost participation in the October parliamentary election in Latvia, mobile passport centers this summer will visit Latvian communities in the United States and Canada, the Latvian embassies in both countries have announced.

Specialists from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs are expected to visit Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York and Cleveland in the U.S. and Toronto, Hamilton, Montréal, Vancouver and Edmonton in Canada. The specialists are planning to visit the U.S. cities in late June and July, and the Canadian cities in July.

In order to vote by mail or in person, Latvian citizens must present a valid Latvian passport.

Latvia’s ambassador to the United States, Andrejs Pildegovičs, speaking May 16 to the Latvian community in Minneapolis, said the mobile passport centers will allow citizens who need new or renewed passports to be prepared for the Saeima election.

Jānis Kukainis, public affairs director for the American Latvian Association, was instrumental in convincing Latvian government officials to put together a plan for the mobile units, Pildegovičs said.

It would be ideal to get at least 40 persons per location using the mobile passport stations, the ambassador told the Minneapolis audience.

To help Latvian officials determine the scope of the mobile passport registry plan, the embassies are asking those who might use the stations to provide the following information by June 15:

• Name.
• Personal identification code.
• Height in centimeters.
• Whether it is desired to have one’s nationality noted in the passport.
• If desired, information about minor children, including name, personal ID code or birthdate.
• If it is desired to have the historical or original form of one’s surname noted in the passport, information about what documents give evidence of the surname.
• At which mobile passport center the documentation will be submitted.
• In case of questions, a telephone number or e-mail address.

The information may be sent to the embassy in Washington (Embassy of Latvia, 2306 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20008, or via e-mail, consulate.usa@mfa.gov.lv) or in Ottawa (Embassy of Latvia, 350 Sparks St., Suite 1200, Ottawa, ON K1R 7S8, or via e-mail to consulate.canada@mfa.gov.lv).

Those who use the mobile passport centers will receive the new biometric passports. Holders of the older open-ended passports will be able to use them to vote in the parliamentary election.

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.