Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [52]
“I don’t know anything about torture.”
Krivorotov is invited to familiarise himself with the official conclusions of the European Committee on Torture on precisely this issue. The investigator is forced to claim that he does not see what is going on right next door to him, but only a minute passes, and once again we see the man mesmerised by the Criminal Procedure Code:
“We in the Prosecutor’s Office are under an obligation to take legal action where facts such as these come to light.”
Of course you are, but the whole point is that for years you have been ignoring it!
Thus it was that Investigator Krivorotov became a witness for the defence, and hence against any possibility of extradition. Why? It had been been proved in court that the law enforcement agencies functioning on the territory of Chechnya are totally arbitrary and lawless. That is why Krivorotov could treat his listeners in a London courtroom only to long explanations about how things are supposed to be. He knew only too well how they are supposed to be, but he also knew that how they are bears no relation to that. Poor wretch. Anything goes, and nothing seems wrong. Barbarity becomes the norm.
At precisely 1300 hours Greenwich Mean Time Judge Workman interrupted Investigator Krivorotov with the magic words, “One hour for lunch.” By tradition, nothing on earth takes precedence over the lunch hour. The same inflexible rules, however, require that a witness whose cross-examination has not been completed should not discuss matters relating to what he is being cross-questioned about with anyone. This meant that while everybody else was having lunch, Investigator Krivorotov stood as lonely as a statue at the courtroom door, smoking nervously. Deputy Prosecutor-General Fridinsky walked past him from the Italian restaurant across the road. Others involved in the case made their way back for the afternoon sitting. One couldn’t help feeling sorry for Krivorotov, and an exceptionally humane impulse prompted your correspondent to go over and offer him a sandwich. Lord, how he recoiled! “No!” He shook his head as if he had been offered an arsenic sandwich. “But I have two. I have more than I need.” “No!” Investigator Krivorotov blushed and turned away, as if we did not know each other. Something wasn’t right.
THE PROSECUTOR-GENERAL’S OFFICE LOSES: LEGAL COSTS WILL BE MET BY THE RUSSIAN TAXPAYER
November 17, 2003
People can have entirely different perspectives: love Zakayev or hate him, support the Kremlin’s atrocities in Chechnya or fight them, rejoice at world leaders’ love of Putin or be horrified by it, but on November 13, 2003, shortly before noon Greenwich Mean Time, the entire Russian nation was given a good and deserved kicking by Europe. The Prosecutor-General’s Office had been asking for it for a long time. In Bow Street Magistrates Court, in the case of The Government of the Russian Federation versus Akhmed Zakayev, Mr Justice Timothy Workman delivered an outspoken and uncompromising judgment, beyond anything the most wild-eyed optimists had dared to hope for when they assured us that Zakayev would not be extradited.
The refusal of Judge Timothy Workman to extradite Zakayev was based firstly on the grounds that Russia lacks an independent judiciary, so there can be no confident expectation of a fair trial; secondly, on the fact that racism flourishes in our country; and thirdly, because what is going on in Chechnya is not a rebellion or an “anti-terrorist operation” but a full-blown civil war instigated by the Russian Government itself in contravention of its obligation to avert wars, to extinguish them, and not to foment them within its borders.
The verdict was announced not in the ordinary magistrates’ courtroom where the case had been heard but in a lofty ceremonial hall with something resembling a throne set at a considerable height. On this the