Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [107]
The Cadet pushes the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code about on the table. He is annoyed and makes no attempt to conceal it, but the judge continues.
“Question from the Investigator: ‘Who is influencing you? Why do you keep changing your testimony?’
Reply: ‘Nobody is influencing me. I am changing my testimony now for the first time because I didn’t take the proceedings seriously before.’ ”
That last revealing remark really is the truth. The vast majority of federals in Chechnya never for a moment imagine that the criminal law might be applied to them for abducting and murdering the civilian population. Among them, anyone who has killed a Chechen is a hero; a coward is anyone afraid to kill one. This has been going on for five years and The Cadet, who is suddenly facing justice, is the sole exception to this impunity. Several times during the November court hearings The Cadet repeated, “I never thought this would be taken seriously,” so he lied through his teeth again and again.
The next hearing of the case will be on December 15, when witnesses for the prosecution are to be questioned.
THE CADET GETS LONGER THAN BUDANOV: THE FIRST TRIAL OF A WAR CRIMINAL HAS ENDED
March 31, 2005
On March 29 the Chairman of the October District Court in Grozny, Maierbek Mezhidov, finally passed sentence in the case of Sergey Lapin. The trial lasted one and a half years, and at times had looked like collapsing.
The charge against Lapin, the sentence, and the circumstances in which a war criminal has eventually been found guilty in Grozny, are without precedent. This is the first time in the entire history of the Second Chechen War that a criminal case for something very common – the abduction and torture of a civilian – has been brought against a federal officer in Chechnya.
The conviction was extremely difficult to achieve, and only the principled position of the Supreme Court of Russia made it possible to withstand immense pressure from the Interior Ministry. The militia’s Ministry at first did everything it could to ensure that Lapin was tried anywhere other than in Chechnya. Later, when the Supreme Court refused to back down, it blatantly tried to intimidate those taking part in the Grozny trial.
However, both Judge Mezhidov and Prosecutor Vladimir Rozetov stood their ground. The result is that Lapin will serve 11 years in a strict-regime labor colony, with a further three-year ban on working in the law enforcement agencies. An interlocutory ruling was addressed to those in charge of the Khanty-Mansiysk Interior Affairs Directorate, who did their utmost to obstruct the course of justice and conceal brutal crimes.
Details will follow in our next issue.
LAPIN, A BRUTAL TORTURER, FOUND GUILTY BUT REFUSES TO IMPLICATE HIS ACCOMPLICES
April 4, 2005
As already reported, on March 29 in Grozny sentence was passed in the case of Sergey Lapin (alias “The Cadet”). The torturer was sentenced to 11 years in a strict-regime labor camp. Let us first present some quotations from the verdict:
“Lapin, receiving Murdalov into his custody from Investigator Zhuravlyov, took the former into his office where, for several hours, together with other colleagues unidentified by the investigation, he beat Murdalov, inflicting numerous blows with his hands, feet, and also a rubber PR 73 truncheon on different parts of his body, causing him injury in the form of cranio-cerebral trauma accompanied by pathological life-threatening states, namely, a prolonged loss of consciousness, convulsions and respiratory failure. When the officers at the holding cell, having