| Akhmed Zakayev was not extradited to Russia The Russian Prosecutor General's Office suffered a resounding defeat “on a foreign field.” A London court yesterday refused to extradite former Deputy Prime Minister of Ichkeria Akhmed Zakayev to Russia. Mr. Zakaev was accused in absentia of several “serious” articles of the Russian Criminal Code, including banditry, hostage-taking, premeditated murder and participation in an armed rebellion. However, a whole year was not enough for prosecutors to collect convincing evidence of the Chechen ex-minister’s guilt. Last December, Denmark refused to extradite the accused, and as of yesterday his case was also closed in England. Akhmed Zakaev himself is completely free. He will be reimbursed for legal costs and returned to the guarantors the bail amount of 50 thousand euros, under which he was released during the trial. The prosecutor's office can only prepare for an appeal or wait for him to move to a third, more flexible country, where they better understand the intricacies of the fight against terrorism.
For now, the London failure will have to be explained somehow in Russia - if not by the prosecutors themselves, then by politicians. The picture that emerges is too unflattering - either there is political persecution in the country, or its law enforcement system is so incompetent that it is not a year old enough to substantiate a murderous bunch of charges. Yesterday, however, all explanations boiled down to complaints about Western double standards. Assistant to the Russian President Sergei Yastrzhembsky saw in the actions of the English justice “a certain political background that runs counter to the spirit of partnership that both countries have worked to create in recent years.” The Prosecutor General's Office itself complains about the “bias of the London judicial authorities,” which “divide terrorists into ‘bad’ insiders and ‘good’ outsiders” and always try to find a political direction where there is only a criminal direction, instead of calmly considering the evidence presented.
Meanwhile, the London court was engaged in analyzing the evidence, which, according to the laws of its country, is absolutely independent and has absolutely nothing to do with the “spirit of partnership.” The fact that no evidence was found was not unexpected. Russian prosecutors themselves were not very sure what exactly they were accusing citizen Zakaev of. A year ago in Denmark, the ex-minister was detained on suspicion of connections with the terrorists who took hostages at Dubrovka, but then this charge disappeared. The 13 episodes that ultimately remained in the Zakayev case raised very serious doubts for the defense: lawyers suspected the Russian side of falsifying evidence, providing knowingly false information and attempting to mislead the court. The witnesses were confused in their testimony, one of them even stated that he had slandered Mr. Zakayev under torture - this, apparently, further convinced the court that it was “unfair” to release the accused to Russia.
The chronology of the Zakayev trial is also replete with oddities. An arrest warrant for Akhmed Zakaev was issued back in September 2001. But for some reason this did not stop him, two months later, as an official, from meeting at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport with President Putin’s plenipotentiary representative in the Southern Federal District, Viktor Kazantsev. The charge that was brought against him in absentia relates to events 6-8 years ago, which the investigation, the victims, and the witnesses suddenly remembered immediately after the arrest of Mr. Zakaev in Denmark.
All these suspicious inconsistencies forced the court to agree with the lawyers’ thesis: the trial “is not a prosecution carried out in good faith with the aim of punishing Mr. Zakayev for the crimes he actually committed.” After this, individual criminal details generally lost meaning. The British Extradition Act prohibits its application to persons subject to political persecution. The same, by the way, applies to those who are at risk of ill-treatment in their homeland: apparently, Timothy Workman did not believe the Russian Ministry of Justice, which officially promised not to torture Mr. Zakayev. This is, of course, another slap in the face received in the London court by the Russian law enforcement system: not only is it incompetent in collecting evidence and can be used for political purposes, but beatings and torture are also practiced in prisons.
The harsh statements of Russian authorities, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, about the “politicization and bias” of the English court can hardly be considered sufficient. The only way to somehow justify this could only be the extradition of Akhmed Zakayev - albeit at the third attempt. Russia has already officially announced that it will seek it “on the basis of documented charges.” But the chances of success are now completely illusory - especially if Zakayev receives political asylum in the UK. Ivan SUKHOV |
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