Dec. 1



POLAND:

Poland Opens Probe Into 1940 Massacre


Polish war crimes prosecutors have opened an investigation into the 1940
massacre in the Katyn forest of more than 21,000 Polish officers and
intellectuals by the Soviet secret police, authorities said Wednesday.

Leon Kieres, the head of Poland's National Remembrance Institute, told a
news conference that the investigation by 16 of his specialized
prosecutors will attempt to add names to the fragmentary records of the
Soviet officials and secret police agents who issued, passed on, or
carried out the orders to kill the Polish prisoners.

Deputy Justice Minister Andrzej Kalwas said the investigation was an act
of ``delayed redress and justice toward the innocent victims and to their
living relatives.''

Until the fall of communism in 1989, any mention of the massacre was
forbidden in Poland. The following year, the Soviet government accepted
responsibility for the World War II murders.

Soviet agents killed 21,768 Polish military officers, intellectuals and
priests in the forests of Katyn and other places. They had taken them
prisoner when the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939.

The massacre is still an irritant to relations between Poland and Russia,
and topped the agenda when Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski visited
Russian President Vladimir Putin in September.

After that meeting, Kwasniewski said Russian authorities promised to hand
over 96 volumes of documents related to the massacre, which would help the
Polish Remembrance Institute conduct its own investigation into the
killings.

Though a recent Russian investigation into the massacre failed to produce
any new names of suspects, Kieres said he was still hopeful of success
because the Polish probe would include interviews with thousands of
relatives of the victims, as well as a reexamination of the files.

(source: Associated Press)