Translated material
THE ONLY ONE
PEOPLE
We have a lot of lawyers. Moscow is a city oversaturated with lawyers practicing for all occasions of our life: administrative, criminal, corporate, arbitration ... But here's what happened: when the war began - the second Chechen, ...
We have a lot of lawyers. Moscow is a city oversaturated with lawyers practicing for all occasions of our life: administrative, criminal, corporate, arbitration…
But here's what happened: when the war began - the second Chechen war, it was as if Moscow lawyers were gone. As if for a while they all died out. No one wanted to take on cases related to the bombing of cities and villages with numerous civilian casualties. Nobody wanted to move against the Kremlin winds. Do you think there was a line of potential defenders of the unfortunate girl Elsa Kungayeva, who was strangled by the sadistic tanker Budanov? Lawyers referred to any major cases - and refused when it came to the destitute and exhausted Chechen victims. No one sought to lose everything - and that is exactly how everything could turn out, the authorities were not joking: you protect the Chechens - blame yourself.
And in this lawyer's field, where very big money and huge influence are spinning, which no one wanted to lose, only Abdul Mayerbekovich Khamzaev remained. He was the ONLY one who undertook to protect civilian victims from war crimes in Chechnya, committed during the so-called "anti-terrorist operation."
This went on for almost half the war. Yes, then others appeared, brave, smart and kind. But he was the first. And it was not only difficult to be such - at times it was almost impossible. I saw it with my own eyes - how the authorities tormented Khamzaev. How the authorities hated him.
Defending the unfortunate, he was really terrible at times - he was immensely meticulous, noisy, sharp, not restrained in his language, he could even take a swing. Sometimes he did not want to approach him - he threw thunder and lightning at the executioners and those whom he suspected of sympathizing with them. There was not even a shadow of political correctness in him - and this was when everyone became its aces.
He was also very lonely, which we talked about a lot. And this also happened when most of the lawyers huddled together in one big bunch, formed along party lines.
But what was left for him? Was there a chance for a different behavior in order to continue to consider himself a decent person in the circumstances offered? A worthy son of his father, Mayerbek Khamzaev, from Urusmartan, for the sake of whose memory, as he told me, he always, in fact, served? ..
It only remained to be the first. And lead the attack. What does it mean for a lawyer: to participate in the Budanov case, and then in the Ulman case, as well as in hundreds of others that the public does not know about - they did not become loud, although most of them are identical to both Budanov and Ulman ...
Today I want to know only one thing: who can continue to do the same thing and the same way? After him?
No answer is heard. And there are no figures.
From an interview with Abdul Khamzaev to Novaya Gazeta (spring 2003):
“... Of course, Budanov did not evade responsibility ... However, the Budanov case is an exception against the general background. His crime was discovered and became the subject of publicity quite by accident. Usually everything is different - the military is taken away from responsibility in all possible ways ...
- If the idea of the International Criminal Tribunal for crimes committed in Chechnya comes to a real resolution, will you personally be able to provide such a tribunal with materials on cases that Russian law enforcement agencies did not want to bring to court because it concerned criminals in uniform?
- As much as you want. There are hundreds of such cases today... Those who have committed especially serious crimes - murders - should not be amnestied. Not on either side. A Chechen who allowed the murder of another person, regardless of anything, is obliged to experience the inevitability of criminal punishment. These games do not fit into my concepts at all, when yesterday's action movie is made today a general and awarded the highest awards of the state.