Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [109]
They have had no reply. From time to time during the trial Lapin, addressing Astemir, Zelimkhan’s father, only repeated, “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill him.” Or again, “I am only here to prove to the father that I did not kill his son.” Judge Mezhidov did ask, “Was he killed? If so, who killed him? And if not, where is he now?” He got no answer, and could do no more. Under our present Criminal Procedure Code, a judge has no right to enquire into anything beyond the charges brought by the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Prosecutors’ Offices of the Chechen Republic and of the Southern Federal Region not only brought no further charges, but even conducted the case in a way that enabled Lapin’s fellow sadists to remain “unidentified.” Even though the testimony of witnesses named Lapin’s direct superiors, Prilepin and Kondakov, who were both present while Lapin’s crimes were being committed, the Prosecutor’s Office directed that neither of them should figure in the trial. They were not cited as co-defendants. The court could do nothing about it: the law was on the side of the torturers.
This means that the sentence passed is a compromise between justice and those federal security officers’ legal immunity. It is less than just, only half a result. It will be satisfactory only when Zelimkhan Murdalov or his body is found, and that will happen only when Prilepin and Kondakov, and perhaps somebody higher up the chain of command who was giving instructions, are put in the dock.
The trial has highlighted once more the disgraceful fact that in Russia the abduction of people by state employees, and extra-judicial penalties meted out by them (our Abu Ghraib), continue because the state, in the guise of the Prosecutor’s Office, covers up for those who have enough stars on their epaulettes. The state does not search for the disappeared, and families are thrown back entirely on their own resources.
Who paid for this case? How was it possible to achieve this verdict? The Murdalovs had a good lawyer. The trial itself lasted a year and a half and was preceded by a long, hard investigation. A good lawyer needs to be paid, the more so because a major part of the work on the case had to be done in the Supreme Court in Moscow, which necessitated a Moscow lawyer. For the first time in a trial taking place in the zone of the “anti-terrorist operation,” a Muscovite and, importantly, a Russian lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, was representing the interests of a Chechen family. Markelov was a pioneer. Everyone who saw how he conducted himself in Grozny admired his courage, self-possession and professionalism in some extremely uncomfortable situations.*
So who paid Markelov, who had to fly constantly, sometimes every week, to the North Caucasus? Let it be recorded in the history of the Second Chechen War that the entire financial burden of Lapin’s trial was borne by the London Office of Amnesty International, the famous international human rights organization. Amnesty took on that burden because nobody else would, not a single Russian civil rights or voluntary organization. Chechen businessmen, without exception, also spectacularly ignored the opportunity of supporting such a crucial, precedent-setting trial, one vitally important for thousands of Chechen families in the Republic who find themselves in the Murdalovs’ situation. Alas, rather than do anything so constructive, rich Chechens cheerfully dig deep when the federals demand ransom for someone they have abducted. They pay the ransom, providing financial support for the federals’ lawlessness and the hierarchy of state terrorism. It is a shame.
Apart from providing the finance, Amnesty International also organised a world-wide