Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [104]
The judge attaches this opinion to the case file, and the floor is given to Mme Zhuravlyova. Her speech is halting and illogical – she is not much of an orator – but her drift is unmistakable. It is a typical lawyer’s speech. She is looking for any conceivable excuse not to upset The Cadet by arresting him, thereby deliberately ignoring his unforgivable flouting of the laws of Russia.
“Yes, of course, the accused is not here. But was the doctor who issued Lapin’s certificate warned of his liability for giving false evidence?” (Well who was supposed to warn him? The Cadet? Was that not the job of the Prosecutor’s Office?) “I have another request. You rejected Lapin’s request for a collegiate hearing.” (On October 24 The Cadet demanded that the case should not be heard by a single judge.) “However, you gave a contradictory ruling in July. The Prosecutor’s Office has lodged an appeal and the trial must be postponed until this issue has been examined.”
But the issue to be examined is not why The Cadet has so blatantly shown his contempt for the court. On the contrary, it is the acts of Judge Mezhidov which must be scrutinised in daring to demand that “S.V. Lapin should without fail appear in court on October 30.” It is an example of the topsy-turvy world of distorting mirrors of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office. We live in times when the Prosecutor’s Office is truly independent: independent of the law, of logic, of decency and of conscience. At the same time what the Prosecutors are totally dependent on is instructions from above, the Party and government line as formulated on Kremlin Hill. The institution making such efforts to ease conditions for a killer and abductor is the Prosecutor’s Office of the Southern Federal Region, headed by Sergey Fridinsky, the Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia. According to the law it should be doing the exact opposite, namely ensuring compliance with the law and respect for the interests of the victims.
Judge Mezhidov rushes out of the court. It is painful to look at Astemir Murdalov, the father of The Cadet’s victim. He clasps his hands round his bowed head as if it will explode. Mme Zhuravlyova ostentatiously opens a detective novel by Marinina. The judge is soon back: “The hearing is postponed indefinitely …” Mezhidov has been steamrollered: the Chechen Supreme Court has evidently advised him just to put up with it. Satisfied with her tour de force, Zhuravlyova immediately leaves the court with a spring in her step. The Cadet has once again been let off the hook. Astemir Murdalov exclaims loudly in despair. The public stand silently, looking as if they have been spat on, or punished. And indeed, how in Chechnya today are you to get the law to act, and an end to be put to the abductions and extra-judicial executions if even the court and the Prosecutor’s Office, the main legal forces in this territory ravaged by unidentifiable gangs, are against it?
The shrapnel-scarred building of the October District Court is adorned with fresh graffiti proclaiming, “Wolves of Jihad!” How eloquent. What the Prosecutor’s Office and court in Chechnya are doing is playing directly into the hands of those who painted that slogan. The Prosecutors, like the whole rotten apparatus of the so-called “war on terror in the North Caucasus,” are the real support group of terrorism.
THE COURT IS CORDONED OFF, BY THE ACCUSED’S BODYGUARDS
November 29, 2004
In Grozny the first court proceedings in the history of the “anti-terrorist operation” to be brought against a federal officer, militiaman Sergey Lapin, continue.
In the October District Court, with Maierbek Mezhidov presiding, the