The queue lined up in jail

Report from under the walls of the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center, where lawyers conduct a draw to get to their client

Friday, May 24, nine in the morning. At the entrance to the Lefortovo investigative is a crowd. But these are not relatives with grocery bags. These are lawyers. Someone smokes, someone passes on the window of the warrant, someone talks on the phone, someone is discussing investigative actions. “They came to mine at 5 in the morning ...” “But my search began in my 7.” One circumstance unites this crowd of lawyers - for weeks they cannot get to their client.

In the most famous and oldest Moscow prison for the dates of lawyers and accused only 6 rooms, and the number of those under investigation approaches the number 300.

This situation of Lefortovo walls lasts years. There was a time when in the queue of lawyers even reached the fight.

Three years ago, the defenders decided: you need to do something. The way out was found in the draw, which helps to conflictly distribute the time of visits to customers without wasting time and nerves. Thanks to the draw, lawyers may not be on duty all days from the pre -trial detention center, but to come on the right day in the morning and wait for their turn to visit.

- Abyzov? ... Arashukov Rauf? Arashukov Raul? ... Magomedov Ziyavudin? ... Magomedov Magomed? ... Mokryak? ... Wylan Paul? ... Cherkalin? - This morning, a traditional Friday lawyer draw at the Lefortovo walls. A man in round solid glasses - a lawyer of one of the ministers sitting here - reads the names of the under investigation, and colleagues crowded around him, hearing the names of his customers, are noted - they say, on the spot.

And then - the process of the draw itself. She looks like a lotto.

Rooms from 1 to 70 (by the number of lawyers) are recorded on small barrels, the barrels are folded into the package, after which the lottery begins.

The leading lawyer calls the names of the arrested, and the defenders pull the barrels with ordinal numbers one by one. Then an exact schedule of visits scheduled by days of the week is compiled.

Friday draws have been taking place for three years. The resource created by lawyers in WhatsApp, which is called “Lefortovo-Chat”, created by lawyers. There you can see the schedule of visits, change places in the queue, they are also divided by ideas, information, and ask each other questions.

But in recent months, even draws have stopped helping. More and more often it happens that lawyers, waiting for their turn, still cannot go to the client. Mass landings are going on in the country, and everyone began to shove everyone in Lefortovo-not only traitors of their homeland, terrorists and spies, but also ministers, governors, mayors, senators, as well as entrepreneurs and top managers of large companies. But the number of giving rooms does not increase.

In addition to everything, these tiny rooms are occupied daily by SK employees who come to the insulator with the accused investigative actions instead of exporting them for such purposes as expected. Investigators either refer to the absence of a convoy, then promise lawyers to stop holding a date for date.

-To the leaders of the investigative groups contact Bes-on-Les-no! They can promise from three boxes, give an “word of an officer”, and then just not fulfill it! - At the spontaneous meeting of lawyers before entering the pre -trial detention center, one of the defenders.

Of course, the administration of the pre -trial detention center goes to meet the investigators, and not to lawyers. Bottom line: with a favorable outcome (when investigators occupy not all 6 rooms, but, say, 2 or 3) per day, from 3 to 12 lawyers can get to their customers, with unfavorable (when investigators occupy all the rooms) - lawyers, having waited all day, remain on the street with nothing.

- Well, what is the feature of 15 traces per day sometimes goes to the insulator?! -A young-appropriate girl is getting excited. - On such days we cannot get to customers at all. Near the pre -trial detention center there is the FSB Investigative Department, purely theoretically, they could provide investigators of the room if it is so difficult to carry out investigative actions at home.

When lawyers cannot go to their client, their turn is pushed back. Accordingly, the line of the rest is also pushed away. Those who have not passed are called "zero." To date, more than 20 “zero” have accumulated - more than 20 defenders who have not passed into their dates.

-With this regime, when you get to the client every two weeks, it is completely impossible to develop a position, protection tactics, prepare for a meeting or investigative action, discuss some documents. That is, it is impossible to provide a person with full -fledged lawyer assistance. But there are times when the client needs to be found out urgently ...-says the lawyer Marina Andreeva, who came to a pre-trial detention center to participate in the draw.

- This is an automatic violation of the right to defense. The investigation is not just putting all with manic persistence in Lefortovo, ”says Anna Stavitskaya’s lawyer, representing the interests of ex-senator Rauf Arashukova. - This is done exactly so that people here are completely torn off from life and morally crushed.

Here the lawyer went to the client, and then he was able to break through only after 20 days. What will the senior in these days decide to do complete isolation?

- This is a form of pressure. There is a “sailor”, there is a special block 99/1, there are conditions for meetings with lawyers are better, there you can order food, there is a gym, there are more human conditions. But that's why everyone is sent to Lefortovo that there is nothing here, and complete isolation! For a person to be broken mentally, ”says lawyer Ekaterina Malinovskaya.

“They are not given calls or dates with relatives,” adds lawyer Anastasia Samorukova, representing the interests of Ukrainian sailor Vladimir Tereshchenko and one of the defendants in the “Maltsev case”. She cannot see her clients for more than 20 days - her turn was on May 17 and she was listed at number 1, but still she did not get to Tereshchenko - then the investigators took rooms.

By the way, about beginners. Among the lawyers of the Lefortovo Seidels there is a rule: to miss out of turn colleagues whose clients had just sat down.

This is solidarity: a person who finds himself in a pre -trial detention center for the first time is in a state of shock, in complete isolation and can harm himself, concluding, for example, a deal with the investigation.

So, without a queue they missed lawyers to Mikhail Abyzov.

The very attempt to get to the clients in the day for lawyers is already tested with the help of a draw. They come to the pre -trial detention center at 8.30 in the morning. By 9.00 they pass the passes in the window. And wait. The operating mode of the pre -trial detention center is from 10.00 to 18.00. In fact, lawyers begin to launch closer to 11 o’clock, and stop being launched at 17.00. Some lawyers wait for their happy hour all day. To leave to drink coffee or lunch is a risk: what if they call? To go to another client or the court will not work.

There is no time limit for the time itself. You can communicate with the client at least all day (if necessary). But those who are unlucky get to the client by the end of the working day, so they should have time to discuss everything, for example, in half an hour. There were precedents when lawyers freed off rooms at 16.00 or at 16.30, went outside and told colleagues that places were free. But the employees of the pre -trial detention center no longer allowed the next batch of lawyers.

In spring and summer, wait for tolerantly wait: you stand on the street, communicate with colleagues, but in winter and autumn it is hard. From the cold, the tooth does not get to the tooth, but in a cramped vestibule and there is nowhere to sit down.

Another problem: Lefortovo is an insulator where lawyers are passed exclusively with the permission of the investigator, although such a condition is not spelled out in any law. But the fact: just come to come and go with a lawyer order at Lefortovo.

“A few years ago, the Constitutional Court decided that no permits from the investigator, the warrant are enough, otherwise this violates the right to defense,” recalls Anna Stavitskaya. -And now one such a brave lawyer came here with only one order, he handed him out and sits, waits. And they are not allowed. The lawyer refers to the decision of the Constitutional Court, to which an employee of the pre -trial detention center replies: “Your Constitutional Court is not a decree for us. We have our own internal rules. ” That is, we, defenders, can stomp our feet, scream, call for the law, and they have “internal rules” that contradict federal laws and the constitution.

Defenders say that their clients are sometimes sure that lawyers themselves do not come to them, because they “do not want”. So the Sideltsa, according to their lawyers, says the director of the pre -trial detention center Alexei Romashin - and as if he is indicatively surprised: “Why don't defenders go to you?” And beginners believe.

As the lawyers say, Romashin is “the dear person in communication”, but ...

“But in fact,” the girl-apparatus takes the word, “it suits this cute person in a subordinate institution: for example, that in some buildings of the pre-trial detention center there is still no hot water, and ending that the newly arrived prisoners do not give out toilet paper and forbid it to transmit it in the programs.

The situation with toilet paper is confirmed by lawyer Anastasia Samorukova.

- My client Tereshchenko and other Ukrainian sailors were transferred here before the New Year 2019. The stall, where they could buy paper, by that time closed until January 15. I was not allowed to transfer toilet paper. I made a scandal.

She said: "Explain to me what is the case in toilet paper?!" Romashin was not on the spot then. Someone from the administration said: "It is hard to inspect it-it is necessary to unwind."

Napkins were not allowed to transfer either. This is schizophrenia!

The Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation, where lawyers have been complaining for several years, have not taken any actions to resolve the situation. And Lefortovo's contingent increases every month.

Lawyer draws, lotteries and draws of the right to get to the client - this is perhaps a new trend in the modern penitentiary system of Russia. And the point is probably the specifics of the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center itself, which, as it was in the 30s of the NKVD investigative prison, was, in fact, it remained, without losing its “internal rules”.

PS

On May 24, after the draw, Lefortovo was visited by members of the PMC. According to the “new” member of the Public Supervisory Commission, Eva Merkacheva, the employees of the pre -trial detention center told human rights activists that the morning “crowd of lawyers” (which was going on Friday for the fourth year) before the windows they “saw for the first time” and that they themselves were surprised: why? ”. They even intended to call the police if it was a rally.

The dear people.