No "no court"

Rare Strasbourg decisions reach Russian justice

Strasbourg Forever. Recently, communicating with the chairmen of the highest courts, President Medvedev commanded: Russians should complain less to Strasbourg. And the point is not only that the payment of compensation to those who won in the Euro -office result in a decent amount (in the Russian budget for 2010, this expense item provides for 97 million 239 thousand 800 rubles). But the fact that the Strasbourg decisions increasingly entail a revision of criminal cases in Russian courts
In 2009, Russia took first place in the number of complaints filed in Strasbourg. This is understandable: no intelligible judicial reform is carried out, citizens lose faith in justice, so the flow of complaints in the Eurossud will obviously not run out soon. According to the law, the decision of the European Court of Human Rights is considered a “new circumstance”. In accordance with it, the chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is obliged to initiate supervisory proceedings, which, in turn, may lead to a new trial.

* * Article 413, part 4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation: “The grounds for the resumption of proceedings in a criminal case due to new or newly discovered circumstances.
The new circumstances are the violation of the provisions of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms established by the European Court of Human Rights when considering a criminal case by the court. ” The rights of the killer
Sergey Laryagin has been sitting in Butyrka for more than three months. He was brought there from the Orenburg colony "Black Dolphin" for convicts for life imprisonment. Ten years ago, Laryagin was convicted of several murders and robberies. Already in the Black Dolphin, he wrote a complaint to Strasbourg. Laryagin claimed that the popular assessors who tried him were illegitimate. They listened to several things, although they had the right to sit in only one process during the year. “I won the European Court, and now my case should be revised first by the Supreme Court, and then by the court in Chelyabinsk,” said The New Times. - During the investigation, two more murders were “hanged” on me. In the new process, I hope to prove my innocence on these episodes. ”

“The uniqueness of the decisions of the European Court is that,” explains the lawyer Karinna Moskalenko, “that Strasbourg judges are not interested in what the applicant is accused of. Even if he committed a serious crime, but his right to a fair court was violated, the case must be revised. In relation to Laryagin, this is obvious. ”

Address
The fact that the decisions of the Strasbourg Court entail not only monetary compensation, but also the possibility of revising the case again, the general public found out only on December 23, 2009, when the Presidium of the Supreme Court recognized the arrest of the ex-head of Menatep Platon Lebedev in the first criminal case against him. True, this did not help Lebedev himself, he was in custody in the new case, and his lawyers have not yet decided how to use in his interests the abolition of arrest in the first case. The decision that Lebedev was illegally contained in custody (Article 5 of the European Convention) was issued back in October 2007, but Vyacheslav Lebedev excited supervisory proceedings for new circumstances only two years later. “This is very strange: why, if in 2009, under Article 5, 109 decisions of the European Court were made, production was instituted only in two cases: Plato Lebedev and Roman Popkov,

* National Bolsheviks, convicted on March 24, 2008 for two years three months for a fight near the Tagansky District Court in Moscow with representatives of the Local movement. - the lawyer Karinna Moskalenko is surprised. “It seems that we are talking about the electoral performance of the decisions of Strasbourg.”

Pavel Odintsov, a spokeswoman for the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, explained to The New Times: if earlier the judicial practice to enforce the decisions of Strasbourg was conducted quite unsystematic, then after the creation of the Supreme Court of the Special Department “The process went”. About 300 decisions were received from the apparatus of the Russian Commissioner in the European Court last year, and Vyacheslav Lebedev resumed production in 27 cases. Nobody has yet tracked the further fate of these cases.

Deja vu
Russian diplomat Valentin Moiseev was convicted of espionage in August 2001 to 4.5 years in prison. When in October 2008 the European Court admitted that seven articles of the European Convention were violated in the Moiseev case, including the right to a fair court, he wrote to Strasbourg a refusal to revise his case: “The Russian judicial system did not undergo any positive changes compared to 1999-2002. In particular, Olga Egorova, who has been in this position since 1999, was again appointed chairman of the Moscow City Court, where my case was considered, in November 2008. Therefore, the next court will bring me only additional suffering and humiliation. ”

Lawyer Anna Stavitskaya says that to decide on a review of the case, it is important in what provision the applicant is located. If he is still serving a sentence, he may still hope to make a fair sentence with a second proceeding. But the one who, by the time of making a decision by the Eurocood, has already left the deadline, as a rule, does not want to face the Russian judicial system.

The magic of Strasbourg
Nevertheless, sometimes thanks to the revision of the case, the convicted person can be released earlier than the end of the term. In 2003, 23-year-old Mikhail Popov was convicted by the Preobrazhensky court of Moscow for the murder. He did not admit his guilt, insisting that he was not even familiar with the dead, and at the time of the crime was at home. Three years after the sentence, the Strasbourg court admitted that the defendant was convicted on the basis of conflicting evidence and important witnesses were not questioned in the case. The Supreme Court ruled: to revise the case in the same Preobrazhensky court.

“Upon repeated consideration, the judge did not even introduce the decision of the European Court to the case. She did not want to listen to the fact that Popov was innocent. The judge simply appointed Popov the term “below the lower” - six years that he had already served, ”said lawyer Mark Kogan.

He remained dissatisfied with the new sentence of the court: “I consider the revision of the case in this form an imitation of justice. I again filed a complaint with Strasbourg. I want to achieve the rehabilitation of my client. ”

On February 11, 2010, Russia lost 13 cases in Strasbourg. She will have to pay her citizens about half a million euros.

In 2009, the European Court of Human Rights issued 219 decisions on complaints from Russia. 210 - in favor of the applicants.
595 violations of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights were recognized.
• Article 2 (“right to life”) - 56 violations
• Article 2 (lack of effective investigation) - 58 violations
• Article 3 (“prohibition of torture”) - 87 violations
• Article 3 (lack of effective investigation) - 18 violations
• Article 5 (right to freedom and personal integrity) - 109 violations
• Article 6 (right to fair trial) - 108 violations
• Article 8 (the right to respect private and family life) - 12 violations
• Article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion) - 2 violations
• Article 10 (freedom of expression) - 5 violations
• Article 13 (the right to an effective means of legal protection) - 73 violations
• Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) - 1 violation
• The first protocol (violation of property rights) - 49 violations
• Seventh protocol, Art. 4 (the right not to be convicted twice in one case) - 1 violation
• Other articles of the Convention - 16 violations