Preaching injustice

The New Times report from the Khamovniki Court from the second day of the verdict

December 28th. 7th Rostov Lane became a closed area for cars and pedestrians. A hundred meters from the building of the Khamovniki District Court, metal barriers were installed. Several policemen check documents. Only journalists with editorial certificates or residents of nearby houses who show passports with a residence permit are allowed through. There are three police buses and one long bus with riot police in the alley. Riot policemen are walking along the alley.

Very close to the court there is another cordon and metal barriers. Line of journalists. There are bailiffs on duty. First they let the television people through, then the writing press. The Khamovniki Court is empty. It seems that, except for the announcement of the verdict in the case of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, all other trials have been cancelled. The press room on the second floor, which was equipped at the very beginning of the trial with a video broadcast from the courtroom and presented as a “miracle of the openness of the Russian court”, is closed. Video broadcast does not work in it.

Semi-open process 9.45 The writing press enters the hall. There are already TV people and photojournalists. They line up in front of the glass "aquarium", where they are about to lead the defendants. There are plenty of empty seats in the hall. But no one from the public is allowed. By someone's unspoken order, only journalists and relatives can be present in the hall. Employees of the escort service of the Federal Penitentiary Service enter. They inspect the glass "aquarium", check if there is anything superfluous.

9.50 Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are brought into the hall. They pass into their glass cage in the complete silence of those around them. Journalists are afraid to say even a word, so that, God forbid, they will not be taken out of the room. Bailiffs watch journalists like they are prisoners. “Conversations in the hall will be suppressed. We’ll take you out right away, don’t be offended,” says one of them in a black beret, addressing the press. The hall is quiet and unusually empty: usually there are always a lot of people at the meetings, a variety of people - public figures, politicians, artists, writers ... Today, the process is almost closed. You can hear the cameras clicking: Lebedev crossed his arms over his chest, Khodorkovsky smiles only with his eyes.

10.00 “We finish filming,” the bailiff announces. The television men and photographers are leaving.

Now everyone is waiting for the judge. A beautiful blonde came - Platon Lebedev's wife and son. She doesn't take off her coat. Cold. One of the journalists even wears gloves. Prosecutors come in slowly: Shokhin with a black laptop, Lakhtin with a large bundle of papers. he puts them on the table, goes to the window, looks out into the street. In the general silence, suddenly, from the walkie-talkie of the bailiff comes: “Five people with posters!” They were unable to break through the cordon.

** Like a sentence

10.10** The referee leaves the deliberation room with a burgundy folder containing an impressive pile of papers. This is the part of the verdict that he will announce today. Judge Danilkin begins to read: "... the defendants were aware..." What he says next is absolutely incomprehensible. If you squint your eyes tightly, strain your ears, you can distinguish repeated words and phrases in his mournful muttering: “OJSC NK Yukos” ... “the minutes of the general meeting approved the deal for the sale of oil ..”, “the indicated oil price does not correspond to the market price .. . ”, “Guilt is confirmed ...” The judge does not read, he seems to be singing, a song that he alone understands. Prosecutor Lakhtin runs his finger over the text in front of him. The journalists suggested that this was either the speech of the state prosecutors in the debate, or even the text of the verdict (!)

And there is nothing surprising in this. Even on the first day of the announcement of the verdict, journalists noticed that the text muttered by Judge Danilkin almost word for word coincides with the indictment. Probably, the chairman of the Khamovniki Court, just as his colleagues often do, used the flash drive with the indictment received from the prosecutors, but, shortening the text, somewhat generalized the evidence.

Unlike Lakhtin, who continues to closely follow what the judge is reading, prosecutor Shokhin is asleep, leaning low over a closed laptop. Sleeping one of the bailiffs guarding the "aquarium".

The defendants, on the contrary, are busy with the case. They have earplugs brought by lawyers in their ears: either as a protest, or simply because there is no strength to listen to this sermon of injustice for 9 hours a day, which threatens them with many years of prison and camp. Khodorkovsky is reading the latest issue of The New Times magazine with his interview, Platon Lebedev is exchanging glances with his wife, showing something to her with his hands. When she leaves, Lebedev will take out his favorite scanword and immerse himself in solving it. To the request of The New Times correspondent to comment on the verdict, Lebedev answered briefly and succinctly through his lawyers: “This is not a verdict. You can only comment on the mat ... "

And black became white... And Danilkin sings... From time to time there is a feeling that you are not in the courtroom at the announcement of the verdict, which, according to the law, should be intelligible and public, but at a church service, where a priest or deacon quickly pronounce long texts on Church Slavonic, which only the initiates can understand.

True, here even the initiates - lawyers - do not understand what the judge is reading.

"What was it?" - journalists ask defenders of the defendants during the break.

“He reads out the testimony of witnesses in court, lists the documents that were read out during the court hearings,” explains Lebedev’s lawyer Elena Liptser. - All this is very strange. For example, yesterday he read out the testimony of Khodorkovsky, citing them in one paragraph, and Khodorkovsky, as you know, spoke in court for almost two months.”

“He (lawyers now refer to judge Danilkin exclusively in the third person) reads the text that he called the verdict,” lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant tells The New Times. “Besides the title, this text has nothing to do with the sentence. It must be considered that now there is a presentation and analysis of evidence confirming the guilt of the defendants. But in this case, everything is fake. Here everything seems to be ... Like an accusation, like a crime, confirmed, as it were, by evidence of guilt. The crime that the judge established yesterday. But there are no mandatory signs of theft, which are provided for by law. He describes the evidence in such a way that there is no semantic relationship.

Vadim Klyuvgant gives only one example from the verdict, which indicates that the verdict lacks an assessment and analysis of evidence: “The judge says:“ The Antimonopoly Committee recognized in 1998 that Yuganskneftegaz, which, as you remember, is which allegedly all the oil was stolen, and so Yuganskneftegaz was in a price collusion with Yukos. The Court cannot but know that this decision of the Antimonopoly Committee was declared illegal already in 1999 and cancelled. This decision is in the case file. But the judge does not mention this to save time, but presents this fact as evidence of oil theft.”

14.25 The referee announces a lunch break. The prisoners, after giving them a couple of minutes to talk with relatives and lawyers, are handcuffed to the escorts and taken first upstairs, to the fourth floor, then along the corridor to the next staircase leading down to the first floor, where the escort room is located - a cell. There, they are supposed to eat their dry rations, but, according to lawyers, this is such a mess that they prefer to drink some water and leave dinner until the evening when they return to the pre-trial detention center.

**Day two, scene two

15.15** The defendants are let down from the fourth floor of the court to the third, where the courtroom is located. They are being led surrounded by at least a dozen bailiffs with short machine guns and an escort. They are led into the hall, placed facing the "aquarium", the handcuffs are unfastened and quickly led inside a glass cage. The defendants for six years have apparently become quite accustomed to this, but from the outside this scene looks both wild and humiliating.

Judge Danilkin, still without raising his eyes, enters the hall, sits down and starts right from the middle of the line where he stopped before the break: “... this is confirmed by the examined evidence ...” Then everything again sinks into recitative.

Platon Lebedev takes out earplugs, puts them in his palm, examines them, shows them to his son Mikhail, who is sitting on the very first wooden bench. Then he puts them in his ears. And he begins to silently communicate with his son - a young man of 23 years old, with a sweet, still almost childish, rounded face. Lebedev shows him that the collar of his strict dark blue striped suit is pulled up. The son corrects and something inaudibly, with his lips alone, says to his father. Khodorkovsky at this time, in order not to interfere with this communication between father and son alone with everyone, pokes his eyes first at the folder, which he takes out of a small black suitcase that looks like a computer case, then into a book. And those who are in the hall - at most fifteen people, journalists, also try not to look into this cage.

Judge Danilkin's voice, meanwhile, is becoming more and more muffled: "Khodorkovsky... oil... oil products..." - everything else sinks and disappears in the space between the judge and the papers lying in front of him. Finally, one hears: “Gref… Khristenko…” During the break, the lawyers explained: Judge Danilkin considered the testimony of defense witnesses, the head of Sberbank, and in the past the Minister of Economy of the Russian Federation German Gref and the Minister of Industry and Trade, in the past, in the era incriminated to Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, Deputy Prime Minister of the government Viktor Khristenko, who was in charge of the oil industry, confirming the correctness of the accusation.

Journalists are discouraged: then, in June, it seemed exactly the opposite (The New Times wrote in detail about the testimony of Gref and Khristenko in No. 22 of June 28, 2010 ): both then stated that they did not know about the theft of oil in the volumes that the prosecution was talking about. And Khristenko added that the price of oil from companies that produce it in Siberia, and the one that is formed when selling it in Rotterdam, is obviously different, and it cannot be otherwise. However, it is precisely this difference in prices that the prosecution and, following him, Judge Danilkin qualify as embezzlement in the amount of 892 billion rubles.

The judge reads very fast. Sometimes he coughs, then he drinks the water that is on his table in two tall glasses. He warned that every two hours he would take a break for 15 minutes. Closer to 5 pm Danilkin gets up from his chair, the journalists vacate the hall. Lawyer Klyuvgant shows Mikhail Khodorkovsky photographs from New York: a picket was held there the day before , at which Khodorkovsky's eldest son Pavel stood with a poster "Putin, let my father go."

The defendants are again taken out of the hall and taken upstairs. Misha Lebedev is already habitually standing at the railing: as he passes, his father ruffles his hair.

Not a hero The second trial in the Khodorkovsky-Lebedev case lasted almost two years . Lawyers said that Judge Danilkin was a “sane” judge who listened and, although, as a rule, rejected their petitions, sometimes he nevertheless attached some important documents to the case file. Journalists wrote that Judge Danilkin understands everything , is angry at the stupidity of the prosecutors and laughs at them along with the public.

Politicians, public figures, writers, poets, appealed to Judge Danilkin, urging him to judge according to conscience, according to the law. They reminded him that reputation is more important than well-being and a judicial position. They hoped that he would want to enter History as a real Judge. And then he would have no other choice but to pass a verdict of not guilty.

Did not happen. Those who expected an act from Danilkin, which in this situation would be tantamount to a feat, were mistaken. Viktor Danilkin is an ordinary Russian judge, flesh and blood of the Russian judicial system. A system in which there is no independence for a long time.

Younger colleagues are surprised: if Danilkin was under pressure, why didn’t he say so? Why did you succumb? After all, he could have gone to the bar, he would have been "chocolate" ...

And the author recalled juror Yevgeny Kolesov from the jury in the case of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. Yevgeny Kolesov called Ekho Moskvy and said that in the court, the assessors were "forced to write a paper asking them to close the process."

Kolesov was taken out of the jury, and this demarche had no consequences for him. And the trial on the murder of Anna Politkovskaya was open.

Of course, Kolesov is not Danilkin. He is a free man. But Danilkin is not free. He wants to continue working in the system of which he is a part. And he is not embarrassed that his name will be under the sentence that was imposed on him. One can only hope that the term, which he will read to Khodorkovsky and Lebedev in the next two or three days, will be more "vegetarian" than the one requested by the prosecutors (14 years).

On Wednesday, Danilkin will continue the announcement of the verdict: he will have to go through another 4 years on the episode "money laundering", and then he will move on to analyzing the arguments of the defense. Defense, however, does not expect surprises. Well, except that Judge Danilkin promised that the verdict would be announced before the New Year. And it's true: this informational occasion should go before Russian salad and champagne, when the president comes out with his congratulations. Who, however, likes to emphasize that he is a lawyer.