A former Soviet security officer wanted in Lithuania over Moscow's bloody 1991 crackdown against the Baltic state's independence drive has been arrested in Austria, the prosecutor said Friday. "One of the suspects in the 'January 13 case' was arrested yesterday. The person currently is in custody in the Republic of Austria," prosecutor Tomas Krusna told journalists in Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Krusna refused to reveal the suspect's identity or nationality but Lithuania's commercial LNK television identified him as former KGB officer Mikhail Golovatov. Golovatov headed the so-called Alpha Group, a special unit that stormed the main TV tower in Vilnius, a focal point of the anti-Soviet freedom movement.
At least 14 civilians died and hundreds were injured in the attack on the Vilnius television tower on January 13, 1991. The killings came after the state-controlled media had swung behind Sajudis, the freedom movement founded in 1988, two years before Lithuania declared independence. The suspect was detained in the capital Vienna under a European arrest warrant issued last year and could face life in prison if found guilty of "crimes against humanity and war crimes". He is one of 23 suspects in the case, 21 Russian citizens and two Belarussians, Lithuania's prosecutor general said on its website.
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