Translated material
Understudy for a lawyer
New participants appeared in the trial of the assassination attempt on Chubais
In the trial of the assassination attempt on Chubais , which has been going on for more than a year in the Moscow Regional Court, new “players” appeared yesterday. By the decision of the presiding judge at the trial, Alexei Kozlov, two defendants - paratroopers Alexander Naydenov and Robert Yashin - were assigned “fresh” lawyers. Thus, the judge hopes to soon begin questioning the defendants who have not yet given evidence. The defendants themselves refuse new defense lawyers, citing the fact that they already have lawyers who suit them. However, the court announced a break in the trial until July 3 so that new lawyers could familiarize themselves with the case materials.In addition to Yashin and Naydenov, retired GRU colonel Vladimir Kvachkov is in the dock. According to the prosecution, it was they, together with their accomplices, who ambushed Mr. Chubais’s motorcade on March 17, 2005 in the Odintsovo district near the village of Zhavoronki. A bomb was detonated along its route, after which the motorcade was fired upon with machine guns, but as a result no one was injured. The prosecutor's office believes that Mr. Kvachkov organized the assassination attempt on the head of RAO UES of Russia out of extremist motives and personal hostility.
As a source in the court said, yesterday two new lawyers entered the process - Alexey Baynov and Evgeniy Seminyuta. They will represent the interests of Alexander Naydenov and Robert Yashin. Both are appointed lawyers, that is, they were invited at the expense of the state so that, according to the judge, “the defendants could exercise their legal right to defense.” Their appearance in court yesterday was the apotheosis of yet another scandal that has been developing behind closed doors over the past few sessions.
It began as a normal confrontation between defense lawyers and presiding officer Alexei Kozlov. Last week, the judge initially refused to release the full text of the explosives examination. Referring to the norms of the Code of Criminal Procedure on the non-disclosure of methods for obtaining evidence, the judge allowed only the expert’s conclusions to be made public, thereby depriving, according to lawyer Koblev, the opportunity for Kvachkov himself, who is an explosives expert, to reasonably explain to the jury why, in his opinion, the explosion was an imitation, and not a real assassination attempt.
Then the defense requested for research materials from the Potok system - surveillance cameras on the Minsk highway, which, in fact, helped, according to the prosecutor’s office, to find Vladimir Kvachkov’s Saab and detain him. But upon inspection, it turned out that it was not Kvachkov who was driving the car on the day of the assassination attempt, but a young man in a suit and tie, whom the defendants identified as the son of Colonel Alexander Kvachkov.
When such a “discrepancy” surfaced with the official version, according to which Kvachkov Sr. himself was driving, the defense asked to provide data on another car - “Lancia Dedra”. On the eve of the assassination attempt, one of the main prosecution witnesses, Alexander Karvatko, according to the official version, took the defendants to Kvachkov’s dacha and to the market, including to get rugs on which the terrorists allegedly lay in ambush. Films from this period were found, but for some reason there was no image of such a machine on it, according to the source. According to the defense, these facts cast doubt on almost the entire prosecution version. To prove this, a motion was filed to examine ten more witnesses.
The consideration of the petition, like all technical issues, took place without a jury, who were temporarily removed from the courtroom. And when the assessors returned, Mr. Kozlov, according to lawyer Koblev, said that since the defense could not present any evidence for a month, he decided to proceed to questioning the defendants themselves. “I objected to the presiding judge,” said Mr. Koblev, “saying that he was misleading the jury. But he called my words bickering and decided to remove me from the process.”
Lawyer Andrei Shugaev, who represents the interests of Mr. Chubais, for his part, did not comment on the details of this conflict. In general, he assessed the actions of lawyer Koblev as “disobedience to the judge.”
This decision, according to lawyers, is ambiguous. According to some, the court can remove from the process a participant who violates order. Others believe that the judge does not have the right to do this - he can only stop the process and send a representation to the Bar Association with a demand to deprive the “hooligan” of his status. But the legal conflict did not stop there. By removing Koblev's lawyer, Mr. Kozlov thereby deprived Naydenov of his lawyer, since the paratrooper's second lawyer, Lebedev, is now in the hospital. The interrogation of the defendants, which was supposed to take place yesterday, is impossible without a lawyer, and the court invited an appointed lawyer. But Naydenov was not happy about this concern, saying that he did not intend to enter into a contract with a new lawyer, since, albeit formally, Lebedev remained his defender. Moreover, according to Mr. Koblev, Naydenov allegedly went on a hunger strike to protest against the infringement of his rights.
The court showed similar “concern” about Robert Yashin, inviting a lawyer for him as well. But Yashin’s “original” defender, Ruslan Zakalyuzhny, is alive and well and was even present yesterday at the hearing at which the court presented him with a “understudy.” After the hearing, Mr. Zakalyuzhny did not hide his surprise: “For some reason, the judge is in a hurry to complete the process in every possible way. As for my understudy, it feels like I’m just being squeezed out of the process.”
One way or another, the interrogation of the defendants did not take place yesterday. Naydenov's new lawyer filed a motion to familiarize himself with the case. Mr. Kozlov satisfied him, but only took five days to read almost 50 volumes.