FORMER SOVIET SECRET POLICEMAN GOES ON TRIAL FOR GENOCIDE.

Alfons Noviks, 87, is now being tried for his role in deporting more than 60,000 Latvians during Stalin’s rule, BNS reported June 19. Noviks, who headed the republic’s NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) from 1940 to 1953, denied that he had been responsible for the mass deportations, acknowledging only that he had ordered “several hundred” Latvians to be sent to Siberia. The case, the first under Latvia’s anti-genocide law, is expected to last two months and to produce a number of revelations about Soviet rule in Latvia.

Vilnius Seen Restricting Local Government Powers.