Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [50]
“Tell me, Mr Krivorotov, would Mr Dushuyev have been able to reveal any ill-treatment of himself during the course of the investigation? Before this hearing in London?” James Lewis, a lawyer acting on behalf of Investigator Krivorotov, asks a question which seems important to him. Mr Lewis is acting for the British Crown Prosecution Service, which is supporting (such is the way things are done here) the demand of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office for extradition of Akhmed Zakayev.
“There is a clear procedure,” Krivorotov says, staying firmly in his theoretical realm. “Dushuyev had several opportunities to state that impermissible methods had been used against him. In the first instance at the Preliminary Investigation, to me. The Criminal Procedure Code …”
The courtroom is verging on despair. Only Sergey Fridinsky, Deputy Prosecutor-General of the Southern Federal Region, who has publicly vowed to have Zakayev returned to Russia, looks pleased. Today he is present in London and smiles into his moustache with satisfaction when Krivorotov gets on his hobby-horse.
“What was Dushuyev believed to be guilty of when you brought criminal charges against him?” By now it is Zakayev’s barrister, Edward Fitzgerald, asking the questions. He approaches in a roundabout way, and why this detail should interest him is unclear. “Was it illegal to be Zakayev’s bodyguard? After all, the government of which Zakayev was a member was recognised by President Yeltsin.”
“It is news to me that Maskhadov’s government was recognised by the President.” For the first time Investigator Krivorotov replies honestly. He is genuinely taken aback. Nevertheless he rapidly regains his composure. “Under the Russian Constitution there is no provision for the Minister of a self-proclaimed republic to have an armed bodyguard. Dushuyev was bearing arms at that time illegally. From 1999 Dushuyev was a member of an illegal armed group, the Chernorechiye Front. That is why charges were brought.”
“In other words, anybody who resisted the Russian troops in 1999 is considered to have committed a criminal offence?”
“Of course,” Krivorotov shrugs, glancing expressionlessly at Fridinsky and barking out the sentences he has memorised. “Anybody who opposes the federal troops is guilty of an act endangering society. In accordance with the Criminal Code.”
So the case proceeds, constantly returning inexorably to the central question to which Russia has no answer: what was and is actually going on in Chechnya from a legal point of view? Who is resisting whom there, and why? And how is the situation to be resolved?
This time Mr Fitzgerald is interrupted by Mr Lewis, to whose back the indignant Deputy Prosecutor-General Fridinsky has addressed a remark. Discussing the political aspect of the Prosecutor’s Office’s work is not permitted.
“Fine. Explain how Dushuyev was provided with a lawyer.”
Reader, you should know that Aisa Tatayev from the Staropromyslovsky District Legal Assistance Service was brought to Dushuyev many days after he had been held in a waterlogged pit in Khankala, from which he was periodically dragged for interrogation under torture. She advised him to “tell them everything they want to hear.”
“Defence lawyers can be chosen by the accused, or appointed by the court. I knew where I could find Tatayev at that moment, and he was summoned. That is, I personally invited Tatayev.”
“How did you write the record of Dushuyev’s interrogation? Did you write down everything he said?”
“I have my own method. I first listen to everything