Moscow accuses Lithuania of "settling accounts with history"
MOSCOW. Dec 4 (Interfax) - Moscow has lambasted a perjury penalty imposed by a Lithuanian court on a witness who backed a defendant's denial that 13 civilians who died during a Soviet military attempt in Vilnius in January 1991 to quell Lithuania's independence drive were killed by Soviet troops.
On November 28, a Vilnius court slapped a fine of more than 1,000 Euros on local resident Dangolia Raugaliene, accusing her of false testimony in the trial of politician and diplomat Algirdas Paleckis, leader of Lithuania's Socialist Popular Front.
"It is indubitable that this move of Lithuanian justice has political motives behind it and is an instance of 'settling accounts with history,'" Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Interfax on Tuesday.
"The mythology that is being intensively created by Lithuanian authorities, including in issues going back to the time when Lithuania was part of the USSR, aims, as this verdict does, to eradicate any dissent in the country," she said.
"Such moves cannot be described in any other way as a gross violation of human rights, for example as an encroachment on freedom of expression as enshrined in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights," Zakharova said.
"We expect that this witch-hunt will receive an appropriate qualification from the leadership of the European Union and its member states and from specialist international organizations," she said.
