WARSAW, March 23 - RAPSI. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will pass its judgment in the Katyn case during a public hearing on April 16, Polish media report on Friday citing the plaintiffs' attorney Ireneusz Kaminski.

The court accepted in July 2011 two lawsuits filed by Polish citizens against Russia for closing case related to the mass execution of Polish nationals in the Katyn Forest as well as in Tver and Kharkiv prisons in 1940.

If the court holds for the plaintiffs, it might oblige Russia to resume the case over the execution of Poles by the Soviet secret police (NKVD).

Kaminski expects to win the case as he considers it to be similar to an earlier case concerning the shooting of rally participants in Romania in the 1980s when about 200 people were killed. ECHR held for the plaintiffs, and obliged Romanian authorities to continue investigating the incident.

The Soviet Union blamed the Katyn massacre on the Nazis, stating that the killings took place in 1941 when the territory was occupied by German troops. However, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev formally admitted in 1990 that the executions took place around 1940 and were carried out by NKVD.

In the 1990s, Russia handed over to Poland copies of documents from the top-secret File No.1, which placed the blame squarely on the Soviet Union.

In November 2011, the lower house of Russia's parliament approved a declaration recognizing the Katyn massacre as a crime committed by Stalin's regime.

The Katyn issue was long an apple of discord in Russian-Polish relations. In 2010, the Russian authorities published electronic copies of documents about the executed Poles and handed over to Poland available materials related to the case.