Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [101]
Almost a year has passed, during which time the case has been closed and reopened four or five times by different Prosecutors’ Offices. The Prosecutor-General’s Office opens it and issues demands, the Nizhnevartovsk one closes it and does not want to receive anything. The Southern Federal Region reopens it, and the Basmanny loses it and forgets all about it.
One could simply resign oneself to all this and put it down to Russia’s age-old inability to get its act together. The telephone isn’t working, the fax has been switched off, there’s been a downpour, a snowstorm is expected, there’s been a blizzard of bureaucratic paper. But what if someone really does need the state to protect them from some weirdo with a grudge? The feuding of the Prosecutors’ Offices rules out any possibility that such protection will be forthcoming.
There is one further possible explanation for what is happening, summed up by the expression, “they are reeling us in.” Officialdom is doing everything in its power to ensure that The Cadet, who stands accused of war crimes committed during the Second Chechen War, should have the best possible chance of eluding justice.
Look out for yourselves, readers! If by chance your hitmen have failed to do their job, beware of Prosecutors’ Offices. That is the real Corps of Cadets. The National Association of Prosecutors for Aid to the Accused. If your hitman has not yet proved himself, he can be sure of a sympathetic ear in a Prosecutor’s Office. If not in one, then in another, because they all work entirely independently.
SHOULD THE CADET BE ARRESTED FOR ABSCONDING?
October 23, 2003
Today The Cadet, Sergey Lapin, until recently a militiaman in Nizhnevartovsk, is one of more than a million federal military personnel who have served in Chechnya. He came away with an evil reputation as a torturer and abductor. Now, in addition, The Cadet/Lapin has shown himself to be a coward. On October 14 neither he nor his lawyer showed up at the court hearing.
Let us recall the background. In January 2001 there was no more dreaded place in Grozny than Pavel Musorov Street where the Khanties – the Khanty-Mansiysk Combined Militia Unit – were stationed. On January 2, a group which included Lapin abducted 26-year-old Zelimkhan Murdalov in the street. He was dragged into the Khanties’ compound, brutally tortured and then disappeared without trace. It was a typical atrocity for Chechnya but had an untypical aftermath, because in this instance it proved possible not only to get a criminal case opened against Lapin, but actually to have it brought to court.
What is more, it came to court in Grozny, despite several attempts by the Chechen Supreme Court to torpedo the first such trial of a federal serviceman. It was only thanks to the resolve of the Russian Supreme Court that Lapin’s trial opened in the October District Court of Grozny. The presiding judge was Maierbek Mezhidov, a professional who had practised for many years under all manner of regimes. As he intoned the customary, “Hearing of the case of …” the voice of the grey-haired judge was shaking, as if he were a schoolboy taking an exam. “He is so frightened,” people who have come to the courtroom whisper understandingly. Fear, of course, is something everyone in Grozny lives with; fear of suffering the fate of Zelimkhan Murdalov underlies the words and deeds of people who have lived many years in the embrace of war and death. Judges are no exception, despite supposedly enjoying the protection of the President himself. But the President is far away in the Kremlin, and the Khanties, who in the build-up to their colleague’s trial have threatened everybody associated with this case,