Pasko will go to camp

Lawyers intend to continue the fight

Grigory Pasko will spend the next four years in a maximum security colony. This is what the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court ruled, leaving in force the decision of the military court of the Pacific Fleet (PF), according to which the journalist was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for treason. Thus, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court refused to satisfy the complaints of lawyers and the protest of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office, which sought to have the verdict overturned.

The representative of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, Igor Murashkin, demanded that the sentence be canceled due to its leniency and that the case be sent for a new trial to the Pacific Fleet military court to impose a more severe punishment. Lawyers Ivan Pavlov and Anatoly Pyshkin, in turn, believed that their client should be acquitted due to the lack of corpus delicti in his actions. In their opinion, the prosecution of Pasko violates the basic principle of justice - the presumption of innocence, since the main argument of the investigation was the collection and storage of secret information for the purpose of its further transfer to Japanese citizens. However, for two months, Pasko, having repeatedly met with the Japanese, did not give them the secret recordings.

The judges of the Supreme Court upheld the verdict, excluding from it only the points about the illegality of the military journalist’s contacts with foreigners and his taking notes during the analysis of the Pacific Fleet exercises in September 1997.

“We are witnessing yet another unjust verdict. It could have been presented as a farce if Grigory had not been in prison,” said Henry Reznik, who recently joined the defense. Now the lawyers intend to send a supervisory complaint to the chairman of the Supreme Court. In addition, Ivan Pavlov and Anatoly Pyshkin will demand the resumption of proceedings on Pasko’s complaint in the European Court of Human Rights, which were postponed while the case was considered by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. Mr Pavlov told the Vremya Novostey newspaper: “I am upset that I was unable to protect an innocent person. But this does not mean that we will give up, dry ourselves off and go home.”

Pavel APTEKAR