Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Russia's last czar Nicholas II and the royal family. MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian Supreme Court appeals panel on Wednesday declared the last czar and his murdered family to be victims of political repression -- a decision that helps Russia move toward closing a chapter in its tortured history.

The decision by an appeals panel ends years of efforts by Czar Nicholas II's descendants to get authorities to reclassify the killings from premeditated murder.

Prosecutors and lower courts had repeatedly rejected appeals, saying the Romanov family had not been executed for political reasons.

On Wednesday, Pavel Odintsov, a spokesman for the court, said the panel accepted the appeals of Romanov descendants to "rehabilitate" them.

Nicholas II abdicated in 1917 as revolutionary fervor swept Russia, and he and his family were detained.

The czar, his wife Alexandra and their son and four daughters were fatally shot on July 17, 1918, in a basement room of a merchant's house where they were held in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.

German Lukyanov, a lawyer for the Romanov family, said the decision was based on law and said no politics were involved.

"In the end this will help the country, this will help Russia understand its history, help the world to see that Russia observed its own laws, help Russia in its development to become a civilized country," he told The Associated Press.

The remains of Nicholas II and Alexandra and three siblings were unearthed in 1991 and reburied in the imperial resting place in St. Petersburg.

Meanwhile, Nicholas' heir, Alexei, and his daughter, Grand Duchess Maria, remained missing for decades until bone shards were unearthed in 2007 in a forest outside Yekaterinburg, not from the place where the rest of the family's mutilated remains had been scattered.

Officials said earlier this year that DNA testing had confirmed the shards belonged to Alexei and Maria.

The Russian Orthodox Church made all seven of them saints in 2000.

"Rehabilitation" in Russia has legal, political and cultural significance. It recognizes that a person was a victim of political repression by the country's Communist-era authorities.

Many of those who were shot or sent to prison camps under Soviet rule have been rehabilitated, which also exonerates them of the crimes they were accused of at the time.