At a rapid pace

One month left to sentence the fugitive security officer

Yesterday, the Naro-Fominsk Garrison Military Court began the trial in absentia of former FSB lieutenant colonel Alexander Litvinenko. The judge immediately rejected all requests from the lawyer of the disgraced security officer, read out the charges and promptly moved on to interrogating the victims. At this rate, the verdict may well be rendered before July 1 of this year, when the new Criminal Procedure Code comes into force, and Litvinenko cannot be tried in absentia.

Mr. Litvinenko's lawyer Mikhail Marov yesterday filed four motions at once: not to consider the case in the absence of his client (he lives in England); that the Naro-Fominsk court has no right to consider this case at all; on postponing the trial until the second lawyer, the lieutenant colonel, returns from vacation and allocating additional time to familiarize himself with the investigation materials. The servants of Themis refused the lawyer all this, after which they began to read out a voluminous indictment. It mentions two stories: about the beating of citizens Odinokov and Sergeev by a lieutenant colonel, and about how Litvinenko bought explosives in Kostroma from the son of the internal troops regiment commander Babkin, then stole them from the FSB safe and, upon arrest, planted them on the same Babkin, whom he also beat.

All three victims came to the trial. Odinokov and Sergeev said that in November 1997, they were working in their garage in Podolsk when a group of people, most of whom were wearing masks, broke in. Posing as FSB officers, they tied up Odinokov and Sergeev, stuffed them into the trunk of a car, and then brought them to the basement of one of the capital’s buildings. There they started beating Podolsk residents, demanding testimony against the wanted authority. After several hours of torture, the men were put bags over their heads and taken to the Garden Ring, where they were thrown onto the sidewalk. Mikhail Marov immediately asked the victims why they filed a complaint about the beatings only three years later. To this, Odinokov and Sergeev retorted that in 2001, when Alexander Litvinenko spoke on television about the order of his leadership to kill Boris Berezovsky, they recognized the security officer as the man who beat them, and immediately rushed to the prosecutor's office. Yesterday Babkin was also supposed to testify at the trial, but during a break he left the courtroom and disappeared somewhere. In total, the servants of Themis plan to interrogate 35 people, and if everything happens at the same pace as yesterday, Litvinenko’s sentence may well be pronounced before July 1. However, Mikhail Marov considers this unlikely - the lawyer will seek to call an additional 20 witnesses and conduct three examinations.

Alexander SHVAREV