MOSCOW, October 21 (RASPI) - The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled on Monday that it has no competence to examine the adequacy of an investigation into the events of 1940 when Polish POWs were executed in Katyn.

The Grand Chamber stated that it lacks competence since Russia joined the European Convention on Human Rights in 1998, eight years after the investigation was initiated.

For several decades, the Soviet authorities denied their involvement in the mass execution of Polish POWs and officials in the Smolensk and Kaliningrad regions, Ukraine and Belarus.

In 1944, a Soviet commission headed by a renowned academic accused German troops of killing the POWs.

However, in 1990 the TASS information agency issued a statement admitting that the Katyn massacre was one of the gravest crimes committed by Stalinism.

According to the declassified memorandum prepared by the KGB chief at the time, about 22,000 military officers and civil servants deported from Poland were executed in a special operation on March 5, 1940 upon the order of the Soviet Communist Party's leaders.