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Judge: Then why did you say it?

The Cadet: I was afraid. I was tortured. I was tortured for a month in the Chechen Directorate for Combating Organised Crime.

Judge: Who tortured you?

The Cadet: Investigator Baitayev. I would have admitted assassinating President Kennedy. I had no choice. I had to say something.

The Cadet adopts a tearful tone. His claim that he was tortured during the preliminary investigation will be repeated many more times. The following picture emerges: whenever Baitayev, or Moroz (the Acting Prosecutor of Grozny at the time), or Ignatenko (an investigator in the Chechen Prosecutor’s Office) questioned The Cadet, he was being subjected to intolerable psychological or physical pressure. “Confess your guilt,” they said, “or we’ll send you to jail.”

“I didn’t want to go to the holding cells, so I confessed,” The Cadet says.

“But this was all taking place in the presence of a lawyer,” the judge reminds him.

“What lawyer? Abalayeva said people like me should have their throats slit.”

Vladimir Rozetov (Prosecutor of the October District and the Prosecuting Officer at this trial): Did you sustain any physical injuries while you were in custody in the holding cells of the Directorate for Combating Organised Crime?

The Cadet: “Yes, and I was detained without a toothbrush and toothpaste. Can you imagine?”

Attorney Stanislav Markelov (a Moscow lawyer for the plaintiff, Astemir Murdalov): “Why is there no statement from you in the file about your having been subjected to duress?”

Attorney Grigoriy Degtyarev (a lawyer from Nizhnevartovsk defending The Cadet) immediately raises his voice almost to a scream. He has a very odd manner which even infects the judge: “My defendant has been mentally traumatised. He has symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder! You have no right …!”

This is a bluff. In the preceding hearings it has already been established that The Cadet has nothing of the sort.

Judge: But previously you said you took Murdalov away from the compound of the Temporary Office, after which he disappeared. Why are you denying that now?

The Cadet: I said it because Moroz put psychological pressure on me when he was questioning me.

Prosecutor Rozetov (quietly and bitterly): Moroz has since been murdered.

Judge Mezhidov: Did you complain about Moroz’s actions?

The Cadet: I decided it was better not to.

The tale of Moroz’s “psychological pressure” is just more nonsense, and here we need a brief digression. In 2001, when The Cadet was summoned by Moroz to his first questionings at the Grozny Prosecutor’s Office, the Khanties turned up in force and surrounded the building, pointing their rifles and grenade launchers at it throughout the time The Cadet was with Moroz. While he was being questioned, they rampaged through the building threatening to take revenge on everybody who worked there. There certainly was psychological pressure, but it was not coming from the Prosecutors – instead it was being brought to bear on them.

Judge Mezhidov: Who was putting pressure on you in Nizhnevartovsk? When you were there you were no longer in Chechnya.

The Cadet: Prosecutors Din and Leushin, who came to question me from the Chechen Republic. (Leushin has also been murdered.)

The Cadet swaps his nauseating lachrymosity for a loutish tone, and periodically jabs his finger threateningly at the judge. He announces, “I think Murdalov was beaten by Taimaskhanov [Salim Taimaskhanov, an officer at the October Office]. It was Taimaskhanov took him off somewhere out of the holding cell.”

Judge: You gave no testimony against either Moroz or Taimaskhanov while they were alive, and immediately changed your testimony when you learned they had been killed. How is that to be explained?

The Cadet: If you are being tortured for days on end you will sign anything. I had no choice.

From his seat Astemir Murdalov asks pointedly, “And did our people have any choice?”

Finally the lawyers begin to run out of patience. Prosecutor Rozetov asks the judge to read out Lapin’s previous testimony so as to remind him of what