The Chamber stood up

The Public Chamber promised to look into why former Yukos lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina was denied parole. A number of chamber members appealed to President Dmitry Medvedev with a request to pardon Bakhmina. The appeal was signed by Alla Gerber, Nikolai Svanidze, Evgeniy Yasin, Henry Reznik, Anatoly Kucherena and Vyacheslav Glazychev.

Anatoly Kucherena, head of the OP commission for monitoring the activities of law enforcement agencies and reforming the judicial and legal system, told Interfax that there are no grounds for denying parole to Bakhmina. Kucherena recalled that “when making a decision on the parole of convicts, the court, by law, must take into account all the circumstances, including health status, marital status and characteristics from the colony administration.” Svetlana Bakhmina has two small children, and is now expecting a third. In addition, representatives of the Federal Penitentiary Service gave her a positive description. Kucherena is perplexed and is going to “find out what the court proceeded from.”