Court Drops Genocide Case Against Terminally Ill Defendant
At the public prosecutor's plea for mercy, Pärnu County Court dropped a case against a terminally ill man accused of assisting the Soviet deportations.
The 87-year-old Jaan Pähna, a former operative commissar for the Soviet security ministry, faced charges of genocide, a Pärnu County Court spokeswoman told uudised.err.ee.
According to the charges, information secretly gathered by Pähna in 1949 was used as the basis of deporting 14 families and 46 individuals to Siberia. Eight of the deported did not survive the camps.
Allegedly, Pähna himself detained two people and was responsible for the seizure of six more as a commissar in charge.
Pähna has denied the charges.
Ott Tammik