Baltic States – CIS, Crime, Legislation, Lithuania

The disappearance of the scandalous footage turned out at a sitting of the Court of Appeal of Lithuania on December 14."We need an investigation into the investigation of the Medininkai case. But nobody so far has started it," said MEP, chairman of the Supreme Council- Restoration Seimas Vytautas Landsbergis. Horrific images on early morning of July 31, 1991 were taken by one of the first witnesses of the massacre, the then chief of Lavoriskiu customs post Vytas Petruskevicius who arrived to the Medininkai border post. In an interview to the daily Lietuvos Zinios, Petruskevicius was sorry that before giving the original tape to the then chiefs of the Customs Department he had not made a copy.

According to MEP Landsbergis, it is obvious that someone finds it useful to protract the Medininkai case investigation as longer as possible and hide everything that could prove anything so that only a single version of the crime would be left. "As a politician I can imagine that the main interest here was a political one. And most probably it is of another country, so that it could avoid war crime charges. This could have influenced people from the Prosecutor General's office who tend to give in to this country's influence. That is the only explanation I can think of," said MEP Landsbergis.