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issued by the Registrar of the Court ECHR 157 (2012) 12.04.2012 Forthcoming Chamber judgment concerning complaints about inadequate investigation into Katy massacre The European Court of Human Rights will be delivering in public a Chamber judgment in the case of Janowiec and Others v. Russia (application nos. 55508/07 and 29520/09), which is not final1, on Monday, 16 April 2012 at 11 a.m. � local time �in the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg. The case concerns complaints about the adequacy of the investigation by the Russian authorities into the 1940 Katy massacre. A press release and the text of the judgment will be available after the delivery on the Court's Internet site (www.echr.coe.int). Principal facts The applicants are 15 Polish nationals who are relatives of 12 victims of the Katy massacre. The 12 victims were police and army officers, an army doctor and a primary school headmaster. Following the Red Army's invasion of the Republic of Poland in September 1939, they were taken to Soviet camps or prisons and were then killed by the Soviet secret police without trial, along with more than 21,000 others, in April and May 1940, and buried in mass graves in the Katy forest near Smolensk, and also in the Pyatikhatki and Mednoye villages. The investigations into the mass murders were started in 1990. The criminal proceedings lasted until 2004 when it was decided to discontinue the investigation. The text of the decision has remained classified to date and the applicants did not have access to it. On 26 November 2010 the Russian Duma adopted a statement about the "Katy tragedy", in which it reiterated that the "mass extermination of Polish citizens on USSR territory during the Second World War" had been carried out on Stalin's orders and that it was necessary to continue "verifying the lists of victims, restoring the good names of those who perished in Katy and other places, and uncovering the circumstances of the tragedy...". Complaints and procedure The applications were lodged with the Court on 19 November 2007 and 24 May 2009 respectively. They were communicated to the Russian authorities respectively in October 2008 and November 2009. The Court declared admissible, on 5 July 2011, the applicants' complaint under Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights, namely that the Russian authorities failed to carry out an adequate criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of their relatives. At the same time, the Court joined to its 1 Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, this Chamber judgment is not final. During the three-month period following its delivery, any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges considers whether the case deserves further examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final judgment. If the referral request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day. Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for supervision of its execution. Further information about the execution process can be found here: www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution examination of the merits of the complaint the issue of temporal jurisdiction, in other words, whether the Court could examine the adequacy of an investigation into events which had occurred before Russia ratified the Convention. In the same decision, the Court also declared admissible the applicants' complaint that the way the Russian authorities reacted to their requests and applications amounted to ill-treatment under Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the Convention. A public hearing was held on 6 October 2011. This press release is a document produced by the Registry. It does not bind the Court. Decisions, judgments and further information about the Court can be found on www.echr.coe.int. To receive the Court's press releases, please subscribe to the Court's RSS feeds. Press contacts [email protected] | tel: +33 3 90 21 42 08 Kristina Pencheva-Malinowski (tel: + 33 3 88 41 35 70) Tracey Turner-Tretz (tel: + 33 3 88 41 35 30) C�line Menu-Lange (tel: + 33 3 90 21 58 77) Nina Salomon (tel: + 33 3 90 21 49 79) Denis Lambert (tel: + 33 3 90 21 41 09) The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. 2