Ends in the water

Employees of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance cannot find documents about the Katyn events that they received from Russian archives in 1992. As reported by ITAR-TASS, the loss of papers from the archives of the institute was officially confirmed by the head of the investigation department, Dariusz Gabrel, speaking to the deputies of the Seimas. We are talking about photocopies of documents officially certified by the Russian side concerning the execution of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. These documents were handed over to Polish President Lech Walesa. The disappearance of documents was first noticed two years ago, but then employees of the Institute of National Remembrance believed that they had sent these papers to the office of the President of Poland. Later it turned out that they were not there either. On July 7, the Moscow City Court recognized as legal the district court’s refusal to consider the complaint of relatives of Polish officers executed in Katyn in 1940. Earlier, the Khamovnichesky Court of Moscow refused to consider a complaint about the termination of the investigation into the case of the execution of Polish officers. “During the investigation, none of the relatives of the victims were recognized as victims. We ask the court to cancel the decision to terminate the criminal case, as this violates the constitutional rights of the relatives of the victims,” said lawyer Anna Savitskaya. On May 22, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office refused to submit the case materials to the court. Earlier, on March 26, the human rights society Memorial appealed to Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika with a request to declassify the materials of the investigation into the Katyn case.