Last czar declared victim of political repression (4:43 p.m.)
MOSCOW - A Russian Supreme Court appeals panel on Wednesday declared the last czar and his murdered family to be victims of political repression - a decision that helps Russia move toward closing a chapter in its tortured history.
The decision ends years of efforts by Czar Nicholas II’s descendants to get authorities to reclassify the killings, which had long been considered simply murder.
Prosecutors and lower courts had repeatedly rejected the appeals, saying the royal Romanov family were murdered, not executed for political reasons.
However, Pavel Odintsov, a spokesman for the court, said a court panel on Wednesday accepted the appeals of the Romanov descendants to “rehabilitate” them.
Nicholas II abdicated in 1917 as revolutionary fervor swept Russia, and he and his family were detained. The czar, his wife Alexandra and their son and four daughters were fatally shot on July 17, 1918, in a basement room of a merchant’s house where they were held in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. <b>(AP)</b>
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