Estonia Accuses Ex-Official of Genocide
The authorities in Estonia on Wednesday said that they had charged a cousin of a former president with genocide in connection with his role as a Communist bureaucrat involved in the deportation of civilians to Siberia in 1949.
The man, Arnold Meri, fought the Nazis and became a prominent official in the Communist Party during the decades of Soviet occupation in the Baltics. He was charged last week, his lawyer and the authorities said. If convicted, Mr. Meri, 88, could be sentenced to life in prison.
The authorities accused Mr. Meri of organizing the deportation of 251 Estonian civilians, most of them women and children, from the island of Hiiumaa to the Novosibirsk region of Siberia, where 43 of them died.
They were exiled during a grim period of Stalinist reprisals after World War II, when the K.G.B. forcibly moved more than 20,700 Estonians to Russia, official Estonian accounts say.
Read entire article at NYT
The man, Arnold Meri, fought the Nazis and became a prominent official in the Communist Party during the decades of Soviet occupation in the Baltics. He was charged last week, his lawyer and the authorities said. If convicted, Mr. Meri, 88, could be sentenced to life in prison.
The authorities accused Mr. Meri of organizing the deportation of 251 Estonian civilians, most of them women and children, from the island of Hiiumaa to the Novosibirsk region of Siberia, where 43 of them died.
They were exiled during a grim period of Stalinist reprisals after World War II, when the K.G.B. forcibly moved more than 20,700 Estonians to Russia, official Estonian accounts say.