Background
The Moscow Armistice contained the following article:
13 Article: Finland shall co-operate with Allied Powers to arrest and pass judgement on those accused of war crimes.Finns initially thought that the trials would be for conventional war crimes. However, as the Moscow Declaration of October 30, 1943 made clear, the Allied powers intended to prosecute for other actions as well.
The Allied Control Commission and the Communist Party of Finland raised the issue of the trials repeatedly during the spring and summer of 1945. When the Treaty of London (London Charter) August 8, 1945 defined three types of crimes, war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, it became evident that Finland couldn't be the only country fighting on the German side where leaders wouldn't be convicted. On September 11, the parliament passed a law enabling prosecution of those responsible for war. The Supreme Court of Finland and leading judicial experts protested the law as conflicting with the constitution of Finland and contrary to Western judicial principles, but they didn't comment on the political necessity of it. Also the Finnish public regarded it as a mockery of the rule of law. Juho Kusti Paasikivi, who was the prime minister of Finland at the time, is known to have stated that the conditions of the armistice concerning this matter disregarded all laws.
Shortly thereafter, the War Crimes Section of the British Foreign Office issued a statement that the British government would not wish to prosecute Finnish political leadership for crimes against peace.
Read more about this topic: War-responsibility Trials In Finland
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