The Soviet prosecutor confirmed the accusation mentioned above by presenting the report of the Special Government Commission for Establishing and Investigating the Circumstances of the Shooting of Polish Prisoner-of-War Officers by the German-Fascist Aggressors in Katyn Forest.

See the Burdenko Commission report, doc. 106.

According to Art. 21 of the Charter of the IMT, “The Tribunal shall also accept without evidence official government documents and reports of the United Nations, including acts and documents of committees created in various allied countries to investigate war crimes.”

The above-mentioned decision of the tribunal [March 12] represents a direct violation of this article of the charter.

By allowing the contention of evidence that is considered incontrovertible under Art. 21, the tribunal exceeds its authority, since the charter represents a mandatory law for the tribunal.

Only the four governments by whose agreement the tribunal's charter was passed are competent to make changes in it.

Allowing the defense the possibility of presenting evidence to repudiate evidence considered indisputable in Art. 21 deprives this article of any meaning. It is obvious that in this case the prosecution will be forced to present other evidence in confirmation of evidence mentioned in Art. 21, whereas the entire intent of this article is that the documents of governmental organs and the United Nations stipulated in it are to be accepted by the tribunal without evidence.

This question has fundamental significance for the entire trial, for the tribunal's decision of 12 March constitutes an extremely dangerous precedent, since it gives the defense an opportunity to prolong the trial indefinitely through attempts to repudiate evidence considered indisputable according to Art. 21.

Regardless of the considerations of principle set out above, which have a fundamental and decisive significance for this question, it is also impossible to pass over in silence the fact that the tribunal considered it possible to call as witnesses such individuals as Arnes, Rekst, Khott

These are the misspelled names of the German officers mentioned in USSR Document-054. The correct spellings are Ahrens, Reks, and Hodt.

et al., who, as is evident from the report presented to the tribunal, are the direct perpetrators of the evil deeds committed by the Germans in Katyn and [who], according to the declaration by the heads of the three governments of 1 November 1943, must be tried for their crimes by a court of the country on whose territory these crimes were committed.

This is a reference to the Declaration on Nazi Responsibility of 30 October 1943, signed by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin; see N. S. Lebedeva, Podgotovka Niurnbergskogo Protsessa [Preparations for the Nuremberg Trials] (Moscow, 1975), pp. 22–24; KD2/220, p. 553, n. 5.

As a consequence of what has been set out above, I believe it essential to insist on the reexamination of the above-mentioned tribunal decision because it directly violates the charter of the IMT.