MOSCOW, July 28 (RIA Novosti) - World War...
in 1944, with some reports saying the dead included a pregnant woman.He admitted to the killings, but said the dead were Nazi collaborators who were caught in the crossfire. Latvia was under German occupation at the time of the incident.
A retired police colonel born in Latvia, Kononov was arrested in 1998 and sentenced to six years in prison in 2000 on genocide charges. In 2004, after several years of litigation, his sentence was cut to 20 months and the charges changed to "war crimes." Kononov filed an appeal with the Strasbourg court the same year.
Russia subsequently applied pressure on Latvian and European authorities over the case and in April 2004 Kononov was granted Russian citizenship by then-President Vladimir Putin.
In 2007, the European court dismissed all charges against Kononov, and ruled he was not guilty. "This is my final victory, one I have been seeking for eight long years," he said then.