The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment1 in the case of Kononov v. Latvia (application no. 36376/04).
The Court held, by four votes to three, that there had been a violation of Article 7 (no punishment without law) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention, the Court awarded the applicant, by four votes to three, 30,000 euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damage. (The judgment, done in French, is also available in English.)
Consequently, the Court considered that the applicant could not reasonably have foreseen on 27 May 1944 that his acts amounted to a war crime under the international rules governing conduct in war applicable at the time. There was, therefore, no plausible legal basis in international law on which to convict him of such an offence and even supposing that the applicant had committed one or more offences under domestic law, by 2004 domestic law could no longer serve as a basis for his conviction either, in violation of Article 7.
