Švenčionienė asks Supreme Court to overturn Medininkai conviction

Pro-Russian activist Erika Švenčionienė has filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court of Lithuania, asking it to overturn lower-court rulings over a social media post about the Medininkai tragedy and terminate the case, LRT reported.

The Supreme Court received Švenčionienė’s appeal against decisions finding her guilty of publicly approving international crimes and crimes committed by the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, or denying or grossly minimising them, a representative of the court’s chairperson, Tautvilė Merkevičiūtė, told ELTA.

The conviction took effect in June, but the parties had three months to appeal to the Supreme Court. The prosecution’s appeal was partly upheld by the Vilnius Regional Court, but prosecutors did not file a cassation appeal because they had no grounds to challenge the appellate ruling.

The Vilnius Regional Court sentenced Švenčionienė to 18 months of restriction of liberty. During that period, she must either work or register with the Employment Service.

The Lithuanian Probation Service informed the prosecutor who organised the pre-trial investigation and represented the state in court that Švenčionienė had signed an acknowledgment on July 9 confirming that she had been informed about the terms, conditions, rights, duties and legal consequences of the sentence.

In a separate administrative case heard this week by the Vilnius City District Court, Švenčionienė said she had registered with the Employment Service. She was fined 800 euros for publicly displaying a St George’s ribbon.

The case concerns a Facebook post published on July 31, 2024, to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Medininkai killings. Švenčionienė wrote that the tragedy was “the dark consequence of the activities of Lithuania’s special services” and claimed that the killers had come from within their own ranks.

The court ordered her to remove the post from Facebook immediately and no later than 10 days after the judgment. Prosecutors said the post insulted the memory of people who had been killed or injured while fighting to preserve Lithuania’s restored independence, as well as their relatives.

A first-instance court had fined Švenčionienė 3,750 euros in February. The appellate court tightened the sentence, taking into account that she had previously been punished.

Švenčionienė said she had based her statement partly on a book about the Medininkai tragedy by Giedrė Gorienė. However, the Vilnius Regional Court said Gorienė had testified that the book contained no information claiming that the killers had come from within the country. The court said Švenčionienė could not identify any specific passages that would have justified publishing such a post.