Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [49]
But what about us? We citizens must make ourselves heard, not just keep our heads down. If you don’t feel moved to defend Zakayev, then at least rise to your own defence. The state system poses a deadly threat. Anyone can be tortured. These are terrorist acts perpetrated by the regime against us all.
CHECHNYA–LONDON: ANOTHER COURTROOM MARVEL IN THE ZAKAYEV CASE
September 11, 2003
In London, in Bow Street Magistrates Court, at the hearings concerning the extradition to Russia of Akhmed Zakayev which resumed on September 8, marvels of getting at the truth about the Chechen War through the law continued. This is something we rarely are treated to in Russia, hence our interest. On this occasion Mr Justice Timothy Workman was presented with information about the stranglehold in which the Russian Prosecution Service and other federal law enforcement institutions have the administration of justice in Chechnya, and why as a result of their stewardship we need recourse to the British legal system.
We remind our readers that the main event of the previous hearings in the Zakayev case on July 24 was the cross-examination of 35-year-old Duk-Vakha Dushuyev, formerly of Grozny, who was listed in documents of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office as a witness for the prosecution, but in court in London under oath began giving evidence as a witness for the defence, relating how in November–December 2002 he was tortured in Chechnya by members of the FSB who demanded that he give false evidence against Zakayev, to which he agreed. It was precisely this plotline which on September 8–9 received a sensational new twist.
Investigator Konstantin Krivorotov himself proved to have been “zombified” by the Russian Criminal Procedure Code. Junior Judicial Counsellor Krivorotov, Investigator of Particularly Serious Cases of the Chechen Prosecutor’s Office, no matter what he was asked in the Bow Street court, even if a question was entirely specific and required only “Yes” or “No” as an answer, responded with a long lecture on the subject of the Criminal Procedure Code, explaining how wise and benign it was, what blessings it brought to those arrested and under investigation, and what vast opportunities it gave representatives of the investigative agencies for treating suspects humanely.
Only, nothing to the point. It was futile to try to stop Investigator Krivorotov when he was in full flood on the theory of Russian law. He became irate, demanded that he should not be interrupted, and even wagged his finger threateningly at the courteous British lawyers.
Why was that, you may ask? Quite simply, Investigator Krivorotov had a different task. He had been brought here to flannel, to confuse, and to divert the case from details, because the details of the saga of Duk-Vakha Dushuyev are potentially lethal to the extradition case.
But everything in its place. Krivorotov, the ardent supporter of the Criminal Procedure Code, found himself in London only because of Dushuyev’s testimony. At the end of November 2002, when the Prosecutor-General’s Office, demanding the extradition of Zakayev from Denmark, sent supporting documentation of very low legal quality and Zakayev was about to be released, Dushuyev was caught at a checkpoint in Grozny and taken, hooded, to Khankala. Under torture, he was offered his life in exchange for bearing false witness against Zakayev. He was taken to the FSB building on Garazhnaya Street in Grozny, next door to the Prosecutor’s Office. Investigator Krivorotov wrote several statements which Dushuyev was told to sign. A television crew was summoned to the FSB building to