Soundless

Prosecutor Lakhtin as a visor, or force majeure circumstances

Something is happening with the Khamovniki Court. Late Thursday evening the meeting was still going on. On Friday, when we went up to hall number 7 at 10.31, its doors were already closed. It seems that they are in a hurry - somewhere in the fields a sentence has ripened? ...

Something is happening with the Khamovniki Court. Late Thursday evening the meeting was still going on. On Friday, when we went up to hall number 7 at 10.31, its doors were already closed. It seems that they are in a hurry - somewhere in the fields has a sentence ripened?

“It’s not scary,” I tried to console Sergei Adamovich Kovalev, who was discouraged by such an unusual accuracy of the court, “there is a press room on the second floor with a broadcast, where everything is clearly audible and visible.” But another surprise awaited us. The press room, with three TVs in a row, was partitioned off by empty shelving. Two televisions broadcast the process without sound, and a completely different series was playing at full volume on the third. Behind the fence, the bailiffs, free from the watch, freely settled down. With our appearance, they turned off "their" TV, but not the live sound behind the wall. "Wake me up at quarter to!" a voice said distinctly from behind the newly made wooden curtain. There was no sound on our TVs. “Could you turn the sound on?” I asked. "How can I turn it on for you!" - aggressively answered a strong guy in a black uniform with a wok-toki in his hands. “Ask your boss,” I advised. “How will the authorities turn it on for you,” the bailiff stood his ground, “when there has been no sound for a week!”

... Elegantly clicking her heels, prosecutor Ibragimova walked past us somewhere behind the TVs and to the right. A stately lady, she looks impressive in the process - Pallas Athena or Motherland with a punishing sword ...

It turns out that what we thought was the press room had another secret. Not only did it turn into one-third of it a side door - a resting place for guys in black, there was another door behind the screens, just like in Papa Carlo's room, and it apparently led to the prosecutor's office, where Ibragimova entered. Without armor, the prosecutor turned out to be a tall, beautiful woman ... When a minute later she came out, annoyed by a senseless polemic with the bailiff, I asked her: “Tell me, is it all the same with you there too - to the mute?”

Prosecutor Ibragimova turned out to be a fine fellow. On the screen, we saw how she sat down in her place and in the very first pause said something to Judge Danilkin. In response, Judge Danilkin spread his hands. The sound did not increase. It looks like the dumbness was a force majeure event.

Lawyer Klyuvgant was still talking silently. Then the floor was given to Khodorkovsky, we saw it. At some point, he apparently said something especially refined, because prosecutor Lakhtin jumped up. It is a pity that we did not hear what he shouted out, although later, already hearing prosecutor Lakhtin, I thought that this performer would have been more suitable for a silent movie. One way or another, after his intervention, a short break was announced, and we were finally able to leave this single space of the press, bailiffs and prosecutors and move into the hall.

On that day, an exceptionally fundamental issue was discussed, especially since it did not fundamentally affect the fate of the accused - a new extension of their stay in custody, with another petition made by the prosecution. What is: a) illegal - just at the initiative of President Medvedev, a norm of the law was adopted prohibiting the use of arrest as a measure of restraint for those accused of crimes in the field of entrepreneurial activity; and b) it makes no sense - Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, who are serving their first term, are already in custody. Although there are some subtleties in the fist law: the restriction of walks and the cutting off of meetings.

In the renewed action, Mikhail Khodorkovsky continued his speech. Physically it looks like this. In a glass-and-steel aquarium for two, he approaches the gap where the microphone is installed and speaks as if into a gap. From this gap, those sitting in the hall seem to hear his voice. Khodorkovsky was saying exactly this in a muffled low voice: Your honor, the law must be respected, the law must not be allowed to be so openly ignored, and the court so brazenly manipulated. You need to leave us in jail, so at least think about how to do it without breaking the law. Platon Lebedev followed. That side is not able to prove its invented absurd accusation, its arguments are false or false. She does not stop at the direct violation of laws. You can't help but see this, Your Honor...

I caught myself in the blasphemous thought that for the umpteenth time in this hall I am witnessing an amazing happening - the triumph of free thought. Social wisdom, its height and even ironic arrogance and dagger sharpness of legal and political analysis. And general fearlessness - the bridges have been burned by the all-powerful enemy, and they must be built not with him, but with society, which is the main victim of these arbitrary, thieves, essentially criminal relations with the law. After what we have witnessed all these past years, there is no doubt that if our business community has given birth to two truly large, independent personalities that society should listen to, it is Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. And they are brought to the microphone in handcuffs.

With a tongue twister, Judge Danilkin dismissed the court until "approximately 11 o'clock on Monday", and I thought that in this hot season, when the Russian political field has finally been turned into scorched earth, one place where one can meet the aerobatics of social thought, and not the water barrels of the political PR, we still have left. This is the Khamovniki court. Strange, of course, the place, but what it is.

And then another thought came. How one must be afraid of any competition, and above all intellectual competition, in order to reduce the polemical arena to the crevice of an aquarium. And how it is necessary not to respect everything around in order to put prosecutor Lakhtin in his place.

On Monday, the force majeure event clearly did not dissipate as best it could. Prosecutor Lakhtin's request for an extension of the term of detention was approved without a sound.