A Moscow court has convicted in absentia three Lithuanian judges who handed down verdicts in the January 13, 1991, case, an independent Russian media outlet Mediazona has reported.
The Moscow investigators accused the Lithuanian judges of “deliberately unjust verdict”, a charge that carries a prison sentence in Russia. All three judges were previously included in the Russian Interior Ministry’s database of wanted persons.
The Russian Investigative Committee notified the three judges of Vilnius Regional Court – Ainora Macevičienė, Virginija Pakalnytė-Tamošiūnaitė, and Artūras Šumskas – of the criminal proceedings two weeks after their verdict in the January 13 case.
The verdict in the January 13 case was handed down by the Vilnius Regional Court on March 27, 2019. At the time, the court found 67 people guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including former Soviet Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov, former KGB officer of the special forces group Alfa, Mikhail Golovatov, and the former commander of the Vilnius garrison, Vladimir Ushopchik.
Most of the defendants were convicted in absentia.
Fourteen civilians were killed and hundreds more were injured when Soviet troops stormed the TV Tower and the Radio and Television Committee building in Vilnius in the early hours of January 13, 1991.
The Soviet Union used military force in its attempt to topple the government of Lithuania which had declared independence on March 11, 1990.
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