| But they most likely won't allow him to do that. The North Caucasus District Military Court (SKOVS) yesterday announced the final verdict in the case of Captain Eduard Ulman and his colleagues, who on January 11, 2002, during an intelligence operation, shot six civilians in Chechnya. Following the jury, the presiding judge at the trial, Alexander Kargin, acquitted the accused GRU special forces of all articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation charged to them, but left the families of the victims the chance to recover $1 million in moral damages from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation each in civil proceedings.
Having received an order during a special operation to search for field commander Khattab to block the Shatoy-Dai road, Captain Ulman’s group first fired at an unstopped UAZ with six Chechen civilians, and then, when it turned out that the director of a nearby school had been mistakenly killed as a result of the shelling, they finished off surviving witnesses, including two wounded and a woman. During the trial, Captain Ulman insisted that he had only carried out the order of Major Perelevsky transmitted by radio, and he referred to the alleged order of Colonel Plotnikov.
The jury returned a not guilty verdict in the case of captain Eduard Ulman, lieutenant Alexander Kalagansky, warrant officer Vladimir Voevodin and major Alexei Perelevsky on April 29. Accordingly, the SKOVS verdict also had to be obviously acquittal.
All four defendants told a Vremya Novostey correspondent yesterday of their intention to leave Rostov for their unit in Ulan-Ude for further service. At the same time, however, Captain Ulman’s lawyer Roman Krzhechkovsky does not doubt for a minute that the prosecutor’s office will appeal the decision of the SKOVS in the military collegium of the Supreme Court, since the chief military prosecutor Alexander Savenkov has already publicly stated this. “The prosecutor’s office was initially opposed to the consideration of this criminal case by a jury,” said Mr. Krzechkovsky. “However, even if the case is returned for retrial, new trials under the current legislation will still be handled by jurors, only with a different composition.” .
In turn, the victims’ lawyer Lyudmila Tikhomirova says that her clients, along with the state prosecution, also intend to appeal the verdict: “It seems to me that the jury approached the case biasedly and did not understand its details. Six witnesses and two accused - Ulman and Kalagansky - testified that Major Perelevsky ordered them to kill the Chechens who remained alive after shelling the car. Perelevsky himself only stated at the trial that he allegedly had an order to this effect from Colonel Plotnikov, who completely denies this fact. In my opinion, the investigation materials were enough to name the main culprits of the murder, but we received an acquittal. In this sense, it is significant that none of the jurors kept notes during the trial, although the materials of the criminal case are very voluminous and it is impossible to keep everything in your head. The jury did not fully examine what happened, but reached a verdict, succumbing to emotions and their own moods.”
The intrigue of yesterday's hearing was mainly in the wording with which the court would reject the victims' claims to recover compensation from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for property and moral damage caused by the actions of GRU special forces. Since the judge in the read-out verdict “left these claims without consideration,” then, as Lyudmila Tikhomirova explains, her clients now have the right to go to a civil court and try to recover compensation from the government there. In particular, the relatives of the victims would like to receive compensation for property damage ranging from 12,200 to 63,870 rubles, funeral expenses (16,400-78,000 rubles) and compensation for moral damage in the amount of 1 million dollars for each deceased, with the exception of Salmanov, whose family declared demands in the amount of 500 thousand rubles. Thus, the total amount of financial claims against the Russian government is almost 151 million rubles. It is not possible to recover them from the direct perpetrators of the crime due to the acquittal. For the same reason, legal costs incurred in the amount of RUB 868,998. 77 kop. (calling witnesses, victims, paying for the services of a translator, experts, etc.) will be financed by the federal budget. Moreover, the acquitted themselves, according to Judge Kargin, now have the right to bring “compensatory” claims to the state, because the same acquitted captain Ulman spent more than two years in a pre-trial detention center. However, the special forces who escaped punishment do not even think of making any financial claims against the state.
On the sidelines of SKOVS it is noted that trial of cases involving crimes by the Russian military against Chechen civilians by jury trials is definitely becoming fashionable among the accused. This is explained simply - the verdicts of the jury seriously depend not so much on the materials of the investigation, but on the philistine mood prevailing in society. A significant part of the Russian population is lenient about what officers and soldiers sometimes did during the anti-terrorist operation. It is as if ordinary people are in the position of soldiers who find themselves in an undeclared war, where it is often unclear who is a militant and who is a harmless local resident.
Meanwhile, in the near future, SKOVS, following the cases of Colonel Budanov and Captain Ulman that have thundered throughout the country, will face new similar episodes of the second Chechen campaign. So, yesterday a hearing was held there in the case of military sappers who, without any apparent reason, shot two shepherds in Chechnya in 1999. As the brother of one of the victims said, before this, the shepherds had been able to get along without problems for several years with the border guards stationed nearby and had no relations with the militants. Igor BURAKOV, Rostov-on-Don |
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