Suspect in Medininkai Massacre case arrested for 3 months

This blog wrote about Medininkai Massacre committed by then Riga OMON Special Purpose Police Squad of Russia against the unarmed Lithuanian border guards in 1991.  All suspects of this crime are still at large.  Majority of them are under protection of the Russian Federation.

However, recently the Latvian authorities arrested one of the suspects who was living in Latvia. As the BNS writes the suspect in this 17 year-old case concerning the killing of seven Lithuanian officers and injuring of one, was detained by Latvian law-enforcement officers on Novvember 28 of last year, based on the European warrant for his arrest issued by Lithuania.

The BNS informed that Latvia’s Supreme Court rejected Mikhailov’s (Nikulin) request to not be extradited to Lithuania. He was under the witness security program in Latvia for having helped Latvian officers solve crimes committed in the country’s territory, and was therefore allowed to change his last name. The suspect will be under his new surname in the case being investigated in the Prosecutor General’s Office in Lithuania.The 40-year-old suspect was extradited to Lithuania by Latvia on January 28.

The suspect’s interrogation lasted three hours. The detainee was brought over to the prosecutor’s office by masked and armed Lithuanian SWAT team Aras officers.

The prosecutor hasn’t revealed whether Mikhailov plead guilty with regards to the suspicions presented against him. It is however known that the suspect does not deny having been in Lithuania in July of 1991.The BNS wrote that the Vilnius’ Second District Court set a three month arrest period for the ex-member of OMON, who is a suspect in eastern Lithuanian border check-point murder case.

The prosecutor presented suspicions to Konstantin Mikhailov (Nikulin) for first-degree murder of two or more persons in connection with their duties, i.e. for participating in the massacre at Medininkai check-point.

So far this is the only suspect that the Lithuanian law enforcers have succeeded to find and officially indict.