The president's press office informed on Monday that Končius-Adomas, who was part of the underground armed resistance and was killed by Soviet security police in 1965, had been stripped of the decoration "in response to an appeal by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania".

The centre's director Teresė Birutė Burauskaitė says that Končius-Adomas should not have been awarded the state decoration in 2000. According to her, the Prosecutor General's Office reported in 2001 that Končius-Adomas had been involved in the genocide of Lithuania's Jews.

"We think that what the president did now should have been done fifteen years ago," Ms. Burauskaitė told BNS. "An award was conferred on a person who had not deserved it."

Pranas Končius-Adomas was one of the last anti-Soviet partisans killed during Lithuania's post-war underground resistance to the occupation. He died during a shooting with security police officers of Kretinga District in 1965.