Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [147]
Why would a man who had not been identified and who could have pleaded not guilty completely accept the charge, decline a lawyer, and wish to return to a strict-regime labor colony from which he had only recently been released?
Where would a former soldier, unemployed and only recently released from prison, have found the money to travel around the country; and how did he come by a false passport in the name of a citizen of Tajikistan of such high quality as to enable him to pass freely through border controls?
Is not the conclusion of this case against Zelensky a ploy designed to preclude a deeper investigation and to conceal the identity of those behind this failed dirty trick?
[On October 11, 2006 Anna Politkovskaya was to have given evidence in court in relation to the Zelensky case, either confirming or not confirming the identity of the man in the dock.]
7. Planet Earth: The World Beyond Russia
Anna Politkovskaya did not only criticize the Putin regime and Russia’s “security forces;” she was not uncritical of the West. Nevertheless, she admired civilised and enlightened attitudes when she encountered them there, and hoped they might be transplanted.
THE PRINCIPLE OF DENMARK: A PRISON WHERE THEY DON’T BEAT BUT RESPECT THEIR PRISONERS
February 1, 2001
It is generally accepted that we Russians do not like ourselves much. Clear proof of this is the appalling state of our 195 pre-trial detention facilities in prisons. For the second year in succession the inspectors of the Council of Europe have described conditions in these as tantamount to torture. Out of a total of over one million people in detention, almost 300,000 are awaiting verdicts in pre-trial detention facilities and prisons. According to Oleg Mironov, the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Russian Federation, 85,000 of these have no place to sleep (the facilities and prisons are 226.3 per cent over capacity), more than 90,000 are suffering from an active form of tuberculosis, and more than 5,000 are HIV-positive. Nor are prisoners given an easy time by their warders: in 1999, 3,583 officers in the penal system were punished for violations of the law and 106 were charged with crimes committed in the course of their duties. Their activities directly affect almost two million people, since that is the number of prisoners who each year pass through Russia’s pre-trial detention facilities, almost twice the number of people serving a sentence imposed by a court. The main reason for this is unjustified arrest, which remains the usual means of fighting crime; as a result every fifth man in Russia has experienced prison. In 1999, 263,645 complaints were received by the Prosecutor’s Office about the methods of investigation and questioning used by members of the Interior Ministry, and one in four was upheld. Seventy per cent of complaints about court verdicts received in 1999 by the Human Rights Ombudsman contain claims that violence was used to obtain testimony during interrogation or preliminary investigation, and that this led to the imposition of an unjust sentence.
Novaya gazeta has discovered, however, that there are prisons in this world where Russians are liked, which is not the case in our homeland; where the warders look forward to seeing us, and will do their utmost to help us with any problems. These prisons are in Denmark, an entirely democratic, modern kingdom, and the inspectors of the Council of Europe deem them satisfactory.
“Personally I like Russians very much.” Warder Ani, a large Danish lady with a stylish shock of fair Baltic hair, happily tells me about herself and her world. Admittedly, she paces to and fro out of habit with the military deportment of someone accustomed to discipline, her hands clasped behind her back. “We don’t have to tell your people anything twice. They immediately carry out all instructions. They don’t go on about their rights. They aren’t picky about their food. They are happy to work.”
Ani is in charge of the first floor of the pre-trial facility, here known by the old-fashioned