Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [138]
What they both longed for during the first two years in London was more stability. They had rented a furnished flat that never quite felt like a home. Marina wanted to have her own things to arrange the way she liked: a home to decorate, a kitchen to equip. Sasha, the most domestic man I have ever known, was even more keen to build a nest. One day he made a calculation: their Kensington rent was more than a mortgage payment on a decent home in the suburbs. They started to look for a new home.
Every Saturday morning Marina took Tolik to a Russian-language school in Finchley, in the north of London, because they were determined that he not forget the mother tongue. She used those Saturday mornings while he was in class to explore the area. She talked to real estate agents and toured houses. Finally, on the fourth or fifth Saturday, she discovered a new development of single-family homes in Muswell Hill, with some units still under construction. One of Boris’s companies bought the house and rented it to Sasha and Marina.
They moved into their new home in February 2003. It was a two-story, three-bedroom unit, with a huge kitchen for Marina and a basement that Sasha converted into a gym. He was a fitness freak who spent a fortune on all kinds of exercise equipment. They bought new furniture, kitchen equipment, and linens. It was the happiest time of their life together. He was extremely proud of the new home and invited everybody to see it.
Among the guests at their housewarming party was Akhmed Zakayev. He was looking for a permanent place as well, after spending a year in an exceedingly expensive rental in Chelsea. Zakayev needed a much bigger house; he lived in the traditional Chechen way, with his two married sons and countless grandchildren under one roof. There was an empty lot across the street from Sasha’s that looked big enough. But as he later said in his speech at Sasha’s funeral, the main reason he picked that location was the ancient Chechen saying: “Know your neighbor first, build your house next.” From the moment they met each other, they became the closest of friends: a mercurial oper and a weathered freedom fighter, the “Chechen Che,” as I described him to my friends in America.
April 2, 2003: Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, fighting extradition to Russia on fraud charges, is released on £100,000 ($160,000) bail by Judge Timothy Workman, pending hearings scheduled for October. Speaking to reporters outside the Bow Street Magistrates Court in London, Berezovsky dons a satirical mask of President Putin to underscore his claim that the case was a farce.
For those not intimately familiar with international law enforcement, the processes of asylum and extradition may seem like mirror images. In practice, however, they are very different. Of the millions of asylum seekers around the world, the vast majority have never had problems with criminal law; most tend to be victims of discrimination, genocide, or political persecution who are seeking a safe haven. The granting of asylum is an administrative process carried out in secrecy by immigration authorities. In the United States, applicants are seeking a green card; in the United Kingdom, a residence permit.
Those who are subject to extradition, on the other hand, rarely seek asylum. They are fugitives from justice who usually hide from authorities, often using false