Translated material
It's not for you to judge
Juries will not consider cases of war crimes in Chechnya
The scandalous case of Captain Ulman, accused of shooting civilians in Chechnya, will not be tried by a jury. This follows from the decision adopted yesterday by the Presidium of the Supreme Court (SC), which, following the Constitutional Court (CC), confirmed that pending the introduction of jury trials on the territory of Chechnya, cases of war crimes in the North Caucasus District Military Court (SKOVS) can only be considered by judges -professionals.GRU captain Eduard Ulman, along with his colleagues captain Alexander Kalagansky and warrant officer Valery Voevodin, have been on trial for three years. They are accused of shooting innocent civilians of Chechnya in January 2002. The military does not admit guilt, and at the trial they explained their actions by saying that they were carrying out the orders of their commanders. At the request of the defendants, their case was considered by the jury, and in 2004, they agreed with the version of the special forces and returned a not guilty verdict. The military board of the Supreme Court overturned the verdict and returned the case to SKOVS for a new trial, but the outcome was the same - by the jury, Ulman and his comrades were completely acquitted. In November last year, the Supreme Court, again overturning the verdict, sent Ulman’s case to the third round.
Both acquittals caused great public outcry in Chechnya. Both the residents of the republic and the authorities were of the same opinion - the jury would acquit the military as long as citizens living in the Chechen Republic were prohibited from joining the panel. The judicial reform, which provides for the gradual introduction of the jury system, has placed Chechnya last on the list of Russian regions - this innovation will appear there only in January next year.
And then the President of Chechnya, Alu Alkhanov, a relative of one of the civilians shot by special forces, Koki Tuburov, together with SKOVS himself, appealed to the Constitutional Court with a demand to recognize this state of affairs as unconstitutional.
In his complaint, Mr. Alkhanov drew attention to the fact that Russian legislation on military courts and jury trials, until January 1, 2007, prohibits the participation of jurors in the cases of citizens who committed crimes on the territory of Chechnya. At the same time, the same laws establish that military personnel who have committed crimes in this republic have the right to a jury, and the panel in SKOVS is formed from lists of candidates, among which there are no residents of Chechnya itself. Such discrepancies, according to the President of Chechnya, violate the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to judicial protection, to participate in the administration of justice and to equal access to justice.
The Constitutional Court did not see a violation of the rights of residents of Chechnya in the current situation. “The fact that the creation of a jury trial on the territory of the Russian Federation has not yet been completed cannot in itself be regarded as a violation of the requirements of the Constitution,” says the resolution of the Constitutional Court dated April 26 of this year. “The restriction of the right to participate in the administration of justice in relation to citizens living on the territory of the Chechen Republic is temporary.” But since the jurisdiction of district military courts, as a rule, includes several regions at once, then, as the Constitutional Court noted, the selection of jurors for the corresponding military court without the participation of citizens of the region where the crime was committed “would create the danger of arbitrary formation of a panel and thereby not would ensure a fair trial by an impartial court.”
The Constitutional Court did not recognize any of the contested provisions of the legislation as inconsistent with the Constitution, but at the same time noted one extremely important circumstance in this case: “For the consideration of a criminal case by the district military court, the jury is formed from citizens permanently residing in the territory of the subject where the crime was committed. If it is impossible to form a panel on such a basis, the relevant criminal cases are subject to consideration by the district military court in a different composition, without the participation of a jury.” That is, from the ruling of the Constitutional Court it automatically followed that the acquittal in the Ulman case should be considered illegal, since the trial took place with the participation of a jury. On this basis, the Prosecutor General's Office submitted a representation to the Presidium of the Supreme Court. Its representatives demanded that the case be sent for a new trial not from the stage of jury selection, as previously prescribed by the cassation instance of the Supreme Court, but from the stage of preliminary hearings, at which the court will be selected from among professional judges. The Supreme Court fully satisfied the prosecutor's request.
As Vladimir Golovanov, deputy chairman of the SKOVS, told Vremya Novostey yesterday, the court has only two cases of war crimes committed on the territory of Chechnya, in respect of which the hearings were held with the participation of a jury. In addition to the Ulman case, we are talking about the no less famous case of lieutenants of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Evgeny Khudyukov and Sergei Arakcheev, also accused of killing civilians. They were also acquitted by juries twice (most recently in October last year), but, as Mr. Golovanov said, now this verdict will also be overturned by the Supreme Court, and the case will be considered by professional judges.