Rights group praises Russian Supreme Court’s refusal to rehabilitate top NKVD officer

File Photo of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin

(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 27, 2013) Russian human rights group Memorial has expressed support for Tuesday’s refusal of the Russian Supreme Court to rehabilitate Yakov Agranov, a top figure in Stalin’s NKVD secret police who is believed to have been one of the architects of the 1930s reign of terror.

Agranov was executed in 1938.

In January 2013 the office of Russia’s chief military prosecutor rehabilitated him but later went back on its decision and asked the Supreme Court to annul his rehabilitation. The court satisfied the appeal on Tuesday.

“Agranov was one of the top-tier Cheka (NKVD) officers and one of the organizers of the mass terror. That man committed crimes against justrice, and quite many of them as well,” Memorial chief executive Arseny Roginsky told Interfax.

“The problem is that lately the military prosecution office has begun to actively rehabilitate former security service personnel who were denied rehabilitation even in the 1950s. Agranov, who was much too big a figure, became the source of a scandal, and the military prosecution service became aware of its mistake. I hope that another series of rehabilitation decisions issued in recent years will be repealed,” Roginsky said.

Seeking the rehabilitation of victims of Stalin’s reign of terror is one of Memorial’s key activities.

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