RUSSIA:Russia's supreme court yesterday ordered that Tsar Nicholas II be recognised as a victim of Soviet repression, a symbolic victory for monarchists who said it would help draw a line under Russia's bloodstained past.
The last tsar, his wife and five children were killed by a Bolshevik revolutionary firing squad in 1918.
But unlike many of the tens of millions persecuted in Soviet times, they have never been officially recognised as victims. Last year the supreme court ruled that a legal technicality prevented the royal family from being granted the status of victims of repression: they had never been accused of any crime, so it was impossible to rescind the accusation.
But yesterday the supreme court, hearing an appeal lodged by a lawyer acting for descendants of Russia's Romanov imperial line, overturned its ruling, according to a spokesman for the court.
"The presidium of the supreme court determined that Tsar Nicholas and his family be recognised as groundlessly repressed and that they are to be rehabilitated," he said. "This decision is final."
A representative of Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, a descendant of the royal family who styles herself as heir to the imperial throne, said he phoned her at her home in Madrid to tell her of the decision.
"This is first and foremost a symbolic decision," said Alexander Zakatov, head of the chancellery of Russia's self-styled imperial house. "It was very important for our society that the crime committed 90 years ago was condemned, and that unfair accusations against the tsar and members of his family that they were enemies of the people . . . should be removed." Russia is this year commemorating the 90th anniversary of the murder of the imperial family. - (Reuters)