"It is understandable that a situation when we still don’t have final decisions after two decades since those painful events angers people of Lithuania, but we have to note the fact that work done in recent years can compete with what was done before, and that raises hopes for a resolution in these cases," she told the Žinių Radijas (News Radio) on Tuesday.
Svetikaitė reminded that amendments to the Penal Code, initiated by President Dalia Grybauskaitė, were adopted in March 2011 and they changed the concept of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
"Now these events can be called crimes against the Lithuanian nation not only in moral terms but also in criminal-legal terms. Previously, they could only be qualified as murders or crimes against a person and not a nation," she said.
"Based on these corrections of the penal law, suspicions and charges in these cases were also changed. It will not only allow court to sentence the suspects for these crimes which reflect the essence and scope of these acts of aggression but will also create conditions for applying specific rules of the penal process," the adviser said.
In her words, following the amendments, people charged of crimes against humanity now can be tried in absentia when foreign countries refuse to extradite them.
In December, Lithuanian prosecutors announced that they had finished a pre-trial investigation into crimes of former Vilnius OMON Commanders Boleslav Makutynovich and Vladimir Razvodov in 1991.
Makutynovich and Razvodov, the then commanders of Vilnius Special Purpose Militia Unit (OMON) of the internal army of the Soviet Union's Ministry of Interior Affairs, are suspected of 15 crimes.
The two can be tried under articles of Lithuania's Penal Code stipulating responsibility for treatment of people banned under international law as well as for injury, torture or any other inhuman treatment of people protected under international humanitarian and violation of protection of their property. There is no statute of limitations for these crimes and they are considered crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Russia has so far refused to extradite Makutynovich and Razvodov to Lithuania.
14 people were killed during an attempt by the Soviet army and special forces to take over the Vilnius TV Tower on 13 January 1991, and more than 1,000 unarmed civilians were injured. Seven police and customs officers who guarded the border of Lithuania, then unrecognized by the Soviet Union, were killed at Medininkai border checkpoint in July of the same year.
