Russia's Supreme Court ruled today that Tsar Nicholas II, who was shot dead by Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1918, had been unlawfully killed and was entitled to legal rehabilitation, Russian media reported.
The symbolic ruling follows a long campaign by monarchists and descendants of the Russian royal family to have them recognised as victims of a crime in the eyes of Russian law.
A Bolshevik firing squad shot Nicholas, his wife and their five children without a trial in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg to prevent them falling into the hands of advancing counter-revolutionary forces.
Many of the millions of victims of Soviet-era persecution and their relatives have won official recognition that they were unlawfully punished, and surviving members of the royal Romanov dynasty have sought similar recognition for the Tsar's family.
Last year the Supreme Court ruled that a legal technicality prevented the royal family from being rehabilitated - they had never been accused of any crime, so it was impossible to rescind the accusation.
But the Supreme Court, hearing an appeal lodged by a lawyer acting for the Romanov family, today overruled the earlier decision.
It handed down a fresh ruling to recognise the last Tsar, his wife and five children as having been "groundlessly repressed," and ordered that they be rehabilitated, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Reuters