Moscow: Joseph Stalin`s grandson has asked Ukraine to investigate the officials behind a court case in which the Soviet dictator was found guilty for the famine in 1930s, known in the former Soviet republic as `Holodomor` according to reports.
A court in Ukraine`s capital Kiev last week found Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders guilty of `genocide` of 3.9 million Ukrainians during the 1932-1933 famine. However,
criminal proceedings against them were dropped due to death of all the suspects, `RIA Novosti` reported.
In a letter to the Prosecutor-General of Ukraine, Stalin`s grandson Evgeny Jugashvili has pointed that such "false charges" could only have come from Stalin`s "main foe" Hitler rather than a democratic state.
"Ukrainian Security Council officials who investigated the case and court judges cynically violated the European Convention of Human Rights, which says no one can be convicted for deeds that were not legally a crime when they were committed," Jugashvili wrote in his complaint according to a Kiev daily.
Stalin`s grandson noted that `genocide` was only introduced in Ukraine`s criminal code in the 1990s so was applicable in case of trial of modern leaders like former president Leonid Kuchma and current President Viktor Yushchenko.
Stalin`s grandson has in the past unsuccessfully tried to defend his grandfather in various court cases in Russia.
Last December, a Moscow court for a second time rejected a libel suit filed by him against a Russian newspaper `Novaya Gazeta` for calling Stalin a "criminal" in one of its article and sought USD 326,000 as compensation.
He also sued liberal Ekho Moskvy radio seeking compensation for "offensive disrespect for the late Soviet leader”.
According to official statistics, 52 million were convicted on political charges, many were executed on fake charges, while some languished in the GULAG labour camps and about six million people were exiled without any court verdict during Stalin`s regime.
PTI
