| Khodorkovsky and Lebedev insist on their release Yesterday, hearings on the merits of the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev began in the Meshchansky District Court. But the essence of the accusation never got to the point. Due to the illness of one of Khodorkovsky's lawyers, Genikh Padva, the meeting was postponed again. And Platon Lebedev was once again denied his request for release from custody.
Hearings are held in the open. At numerous requests from journalists and lawyers, the administration of the Meshchansky Court made the largest hall available to Judge Irina Kolesnikova. But out of fifty media representatives, only four made it to the meeting yesterday. “Today a group of foreign lawyers is present at the hearings, and since they officially do not have the right to represent the interests of the defendants, they occupied your benches,” a special forces officer of the Ministry of Justice explained to indignant journalists. Trying to break into the hall, journalists pressed on the special forces, and they, in turn, tried to push the crowd towards the exit. The musty air of the court smelled of a fight, and the commander of the “reinforced security” of the defendants barely managed to prevent the conflict. In addition to 15 lawyers for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev and their eight colleagues from abroad, parents and relatives of the defendants, as well as the former head of the Yukos-Moscow company Vasily Shakhnovsky, were present at yesterday's hearing.
And a rally took place in front of the courthouse again. Young people from the human rights foundation “Justice” wearing T-shirts with the inscription “Freedom for MBH” and activists of the Open Russia Foundation headed by Khodorkovsky with posters depicting Mr. Khodorkovsky and the inscriptions “We demand a truly open and fair trial”, “See injustice and to remain silent means to participate in it yourself,” chanted slogans in defense of the defendants.
“The state gave the order to destroy YUKOS, but Khodorkovsky is not to blame. He did so much good for the country, for education!” - indignant small businessman Taimuraz Bespalov, who could not indifferently watch the news about his idol and decided to demonstrate his protest at a rally near the court.
In the morning, before the start of the trial, one of Khodorkovsky's lawyers, Yuri Schmidt, said that the meeting would be of a purely technical nature and would not last long. Nevertheless, the whole day was spent discussing “technical issues”. First, Mikhail Khodorkovsky asked to postpone the consideration of the case due to the illness of his lawyer Genrikh Padva. The second defendant, Platon Lebedev, again petitioned for his release from custody. “The conditions of detention in the pre-trial detention center cannot properly provide me with medical care, which I have asked for repeatedly. However, the pre-trial detention center staff refused to grant me it. No matter what arguments the state prosecutor brings, illegal detention without any judicial decision will be assessed by the European Court as a violation of the Human Rights Convention,” the defendant said. But the court, according to tradition, denied Mr. Lebedev freedom. Khodorkovsky’s defense also insisted on releasing the client under house arrest. “The proof required by law of the need to keep me in custody and the proof of the impossibility of changing the measure of restraint to a more lenient one either in the Meshchansky or in the Basmanny court was not complete,” Mr. Khodorkovsky said. The subsequent refusal of the court was not difficult to predict.
It is interesting that while the defendants and defense are filing endless petitions, postponing hearings due to the illness of their lawyers, the statute of limitations is slowly expiring for one of the most important crimes charged against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev - fraud with shares of Apatit OJSC. As follows from the indictment, the crime was committed in early July 1994. Fraud committed by an organized group of persons and on an especially large scale is classified as a serious crime, and the statute of limitations for it is ten years. That is, in the event of a guilty verdict, neither Khodorkovsky nor Lebedev will be punished for it. And in September next year, the statute of limitations on another episode of the charge expires - fraud with shares of OJSC NIUIF. For the remaining crimes listed in the indictment, the statute of limitations expires by 2010. As for the charges of malicious failure to comply with a court decision, this crime is considered continuous, that is, it continues until the court decision is executed. But for this crime the maximum punishment is only two years. In any case, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure, the court is obliged to fully consider the criminal case, and if by the time the sentence enters into force the statute of limitations on the charges has expired, then the defendants will be released only from punishment, but not from conviction as such. Ekaterina BUTORINA |
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