Russia gives Poles more Katyn files

Russia has turned over to Poland 20 new files from a probe into the 1940 Katyn massacre that could be key in proving Soviet secret police planned the killing of thousands of Poles.

Saak Karapetyan, chief of the international legal department at the prosecutor general's office, yesterday handed two boxes to Polish diplomat Piotr Marciniak during a ceremony at his Russian headquarters in Moscow.

The Second World War massacre of some 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens in western Russia by Stalin's secret police has long soured relations between the countries.

The new files could be key in uncovering the role of the Soviet secret service in the massacre. The files contain the full list of the Polish prisoners of war executed in the Katyn forest, Russian secret police documents confirming their dispatch there as well as interrogation protocols and files confirming the burial place of the Poles, Mr Karapetyan said.

The Nazis discovered the mass graves during their march on Moscow in the autumn of 1941, but Soviet propaganda blamed the deaths on Adolf Hitler and imprisoned anyone who questioned the official line.

In 1990, Moscow acknowledged that Stalin's secret police were responsible. But Russian officials refused to refer to Katyn as a genocide attempt - a designation that Poland had sought because international law generally considers genocide has no statute of limitations.

Russia began a criminal investigation the same year, but closed it in 2004 because the killings were found not to be genocide.

Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev turned over 67 volumes to acting Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski in May. Mr Komorowski at the time described Katyn as "an ordeal experienced jointly by both Poland and Russia."