Before the verdict

Report from the Khamovnikiy

This text Mikhail Khodorkovsky handed over the editorial office on November 2, on the day when he performed in the Khamovnichesky court with his last word, quotes from which all the newspapers of the world bypassed.

This morning, a dense crowd already filled the court stairs by 9 in the morning: those who wanted to get into the hall No. 7 was an obvious excess. Sympathetic, pensioners, journalists, former Yukos employees, deputies of the European Parliament, just foreigners who came to “touch the atmosphere of the resonance process”, celebrity - even to the lawyers of the defendants, had to sweat to get through the crush. From time to time, people who were late for other meetings tried to go through the crowd: “Everyone has their own process. We do not need your Khodorkovsky. Road! "

Television men and photographers were launched in the hall in advance. They lined up in several rows between the windows and tables of the prosecutors, tried on, then rising next to the glass cage, then entering the judicial podium. The first of the participants in the process was the prosecutor Lakhtin: put a computer on the table, put some folders and, defiantly ignoring the shooting press, left. The press, however, was not too upset: “He said yesterday that all journalists are loafers, and the media were engaged in protection. Is it to sue him? " -asked the brisk woman-related woman.

Khamovnican Court, the pre -Bannik of the Hall No. 7

Stalls and gallery
Yesterday, that is, November 1, the prosecutor Lakhtin soloed: he performed with almost a two -hour replica, responding to the speech of defenders and Khodorkovsky. The meaning of the words of the prosecutor came down to the fact that the defendants and their lawyers, using the “incorrect interpretation of facts”, are trying to evade liability, introduce a judge and gathered, spend time discussing the mythical political connotation of the case and generally “discredit the judicial system of the state”. In short, everything said by the defense and defendants - "either a clear lie, or outright stupidity." The answer was a murmur of the hall. More precisely, two halls. The second, specially equipped with three plasma panels, was a floor below: a small room, separated by a ridge of cabinets with posters-guidelines for using the AK-47 automatic and instructions on the use of force as self-defense. In one half of the room, the bailiffs rested, in the other - there was a press and again sympathetic, who came to almost all the meetings, and when they got into this closet, felt like people who gave the countermarchs to the ground, and they were offered to stand up for the stage. Moreover, the problem immediately came out with the broadcast - the picture was, but there was no sound: “Fix! Are there specialists in this building in general? " - they were indignant. “There are only two specialists in this building, and both, unfortunately, are sitting in the aquarium,” a completely gray -haired man of about forty remarked sadly in response.

In the main hall, one of the “specialists”, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, answered the replicas of the state prosecutor. He condemned the deception, to whom the accusation resorts to the lack of arguments, and explained to the chairman of the court that, judging by the prosecutor’s speech, in which the words “the court come to the conclusion” slipped every now and then, the draft conviction is ready. The presiding Victor Danilkin only swayed his head sadly every time Khodorkovsky mentioned the “court that came to the conclusion”. The famous film director Eldar Ryazanov shook his head, whose "the irony of fate, or with a slight steam!" Both the generation of Khodorkovsky, and the generation of the prosecutor Lachtin was stolen by quotes. By the way, Ryazanov did not get into the hall the first time either: he sat on a bench opposite the door, but then, in feasting, someone showed him to the bailiffs, and then someone cleared his place in the hall against the wall. Well, then the defenders asked to announce a break - to prepare for the last day.

Hope, close!
The fact that the defendants of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were about to be entered into the hall, it became clear as soon as a person in a blue police uniform went into the Akvarium cage: he looked under the benches, checked something in the corners. Defendants, chained handcuffs to the FSIN employees, were met on the stairs with applause and screams: "Freedom!" Khodorkovsky smiled at the cameras, went into the cage, followed by Lebedev. From this photo shoot, they were rather embarrassed, and it seemed that they were even delighted when the bailiff in black at 10.20 announced: “That's it, the shooting was over.” The “fotiks” and the operators began to fall out of the hall with a crowd, and a crowd was coming towards them - red, heated, hurrying to take a few places: “Lord, how is it all humiliating!” -exclaimed one of the women, whom someone by the hand pulled past the bailiffs into the hall. Then the former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, the Major General of the KGB in the reserve, Alexei Kondaurov, the People's Artist of the RSFSR Natalya Fateeva, the general director of the consulting company Kros Sergey Zverev, the deputy of the German Bundestag Marie Luisa Bek, the academician Yuri Ryzhov, the parents of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Marina Filippovna sat in the front row, Boris Moiseevich - on a black chair without a back, stuck at the table of lawyers: so that he can see a son sitting opposite in a cage. While they were sitting, one of the bailiffs tried to restrain the crowd. "Hope, close the door!" - shouted the chief of the FSINITS in the rank of captain to the lady in uniform. She tried to close the door outside, bailing in black, resting with heavy boots against the door jamb, pulled it inside. It seemed that he was now coming: "Everything, comrades, the sausage is over." But he did not yell - he laughed and clearly enjoyed what he could finally play muscles. “Sit down! - shouted another. - There are no standing places here! "

Like an oilman - an oilman
First, lawyers took the word - Vadim Kluvgan and Yuri Schmidt. The defense once again explained what was mistaken in and what the charge was lying. “They are not even trying to prove anything, including do not refute the facts of the arguments of the defendants,” the clubman lamented. “You, your honor,” the lawyer addressed Judge Danilkin, “is a fact. The prosecutors did not prove anything at all! " “In the style of overexposure and underlocurations, the whole replica, and all the accusation, is withstand,” Schmidt was getting excited. -Mr. Lakhtin left without any assessment the facts of shameless pressure on the court by the president, and now Prime Minister Mr. Putin! ”

Then Plato Lebedev got up - he also wanted to answer the prosecutors. He began his replica like this: “Your honor! The world famous oilman Lakhtin, who translates the word Oil as “zero alone ...” The hall laughed, your honor, smiling with one eyes, put on glasses. And a tall, thin and gray -haired man in a sports white jacket and sweatpants, Platon Lebedev, bending to the microphone, continued: “Now I’m a little pounding. Your honor, you have to evaluate a new method of theft, which consists in selling oil to conscientious purchasers with a profitability of more than 20%. ” On the wall, directly opposite the judge Danilkin, there were slides with numbers and graphs.

In the end, Lebedev said: “I refuse this court in this court. I will say it elsewhere. ” And these words were terribly sounded: Lebedev sharply turned his back to the hall, bent at his knees, as if his stomach intercepted, but then coped with himself, sat down.

For a year and 8 months Khodorkovsky have been brought to the hearing to the Khamovnican Court

Listing decades
"The defendant Khodorkovsky, you are given the last word!" - He began after a ten -minute break, at 11.33, Viktor Danilkin. Coffin silence came in the hall. Protection, an army of six lawyers, pretended that nothing special was happening. The prosecutor Lachtin went deep into the computer and had never raised his eyes on Khodorkovsky.

The defendant spoke calmly, detached, as if this is not happening to him, but with some other person sitting in a close glass aquarium under the non-ruler gaze of dozens of eyes. I read from paper, went astray several times, but did not attach much importance to it. He said that he recalls the last day free in October 2003, that he could not believe that he was facing an 8-year term in prison. He said that the 14-year term that they want to give him indicates that he began to fear more, and the law to respect is less. He talked about the hope-the hope of freedom that he and his country lived in the late 80s, when he was 25: “Partly hopes were realized, partly no. Probably, for the fact that hope has not been fulfilled to the end and not for everyone, all our generation, including me, is responsible. ” Khodorkovsky listed for decades - his own countries, and this path was not forward - back. “The power bureaucracy can do anything. A person has no rights in a clash with the “system” at all, ”he said about the last decade. And one more thing: "The state that destroys its best companies, ready to become world champions, the state despising its citizens, the state that trusts only bureaucrats and special services, is a sick state." And he said: "We, Russian citizens, patriots of our country, can and should change it." In these words, the ensign, who stood on his part of the aquarium, turned his head and carefully looked at Khodorkovsky. The defendant did not notice and continued: he talked about the country that the country would like to see, where the law is higher than the official, where the support of opposition parties is not a reason for repressions, where the special services protect the people and the law where the power will depend on the people, and not the people on the mood of the king. “I believe - it will be so. I am not a perfect person at all, but I am a man of ideas. I, like anyone, are hard to live in prison and do not want to die here. But if necessary, I will not have fluctuations. My faith is worth my life. I think I proved it. ”

Two
There was an impression that he involuntarily witnessed something very intimate: these words were not addressed either to prosecutors, or to the sympathetic, or to parents, nor to the country. More precisely, to them last. They were all primarily addressed to one person, to someone who would probably like to be anywhere, but not in the hall No. 7. To Judge Viktor Danilkin. When Lebedev spoke, the judge took off and put on his glasses, wrote something, buried in his papers, smacked his lips. When Khodorkovsky began to say, he seemed to be a masculine. Only with words about the hope he lowered his head in the paper, and at the mention of human dignity, he nervously scratched his nose. “Your honor, I am ready to understand that it is very difficult for you, maybe even scary, and I wish you courage,” Danilkin at that moment looked at Khodorkovsky without looking up: his eyebrows climbed a house, and the judge's face took a compassionate expression. Who was he more sorry - himself? Khodorkovsky? “Everyone understands that your sentence in this case, whatever it may be, will become part of the history of Russia. All names will remain in history - both prosecutors and judges - just as they remained in history after the notorious Soviet processes, ”finishing their last word, said the most famous convict of the country. “He (Danilkin) looked like that ... He listened to every word,” said Marina Filippovna, mother of Khodorkovsky’s mother, then The New Times. -Even for the first time in the whole process I saw something human on the face (prosecutor) Ibragimova ... "

Nelywood finale
They seemed to be blown up in the hall: everyone jumped up from their seats, applauded, shouted: “Freedom!”, Danilkin's voice came through the roar, who announced the date of the announcement of the sentence. In American films, after such speeches, Happy End follows, the evil is defeated, the heroes are triumphantly returning home, good triumphs, credits. But no one believed on the stairs of the Khamovnik court in the Hollywood final. When the prosecutor Lakhtin came out of the audience, people began to shout: "Shame, shame!" He was clearly scared and, instead of going down, ran upstairs to the fourth floor, where there is a spare staircase. The prosecutor Shokhin decided to wait: he hid in the room next to Hall No. 7, two other prosecutors remained in the hall. The prisoners were brought under the rumble of ovation and greetings. The prisoners were embarrassed, and they smiled rather sadly. The announcement of the sentence is December 15 at 11 a.m.