A Russian court on Tuesday opened the way for the possible rehabilitation of Russia’s last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family more than 80 years after they were shot in a cellar by the Bolsheviks, the Reuters news agency reported.

A Moscow court ruled that the Prosecutor General had acted unlawfully in refusing to hear the petition filed by lawyers of Maria Romanova, a member of the Romanov dynasty, to recognize the family as victims of political repression, Interfax said. “The court found the answer of the Prosecutor General to be unlawful and required the suit of Maria Romanova to be considered again in the proper way,” the judge told the court, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Lawyers for Romanova, who lives in Spain, had filed a suit in 2005 asking the murder of the Romanovs to be recognised as a political crime and to rehabilitate the Tsar and his family. “We consider this decision to be a small victory,” German Lukyanov, a lawyer representing Romanova, told journalists.

“We were not in agreement with the position of the Prosecutor General that the members of the Tsar’s family were victims of simple criminals.”

Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and five children were held prisoner and then shot by secret police in a cellar in the city of Yekaterinburg on July 16-17, 1918. Their bodies were dumped in a pit and their remains buried in St Petersburg in July 1998.

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