In the name of Covid: a report was drawn up against a lawyer from OVD-Info for “disrupting a court hearing”

On April 27, I had to go to the office of the Meshchansky District Court. I also needed to discuss something with [human rights activist, board member of the Memorial human rights center] Sergei Davidis, so I came to the consideration of his case , without being a lawyer in the trial. I sat quietly, the judge, in my opinion, did not pay attention to me.

I was in the conference room, and the bailiff demanded that I leave there. He motivated this by the fact that they have anti-Covid measures. I tried to explain to him that it doesn’t work like that, I know this for sure: I recently had a hearing from which someone should have been expelled from the courtroom, but the judge refused, because the court hearing is open.

I explained this to the bailiff, but he rudely continued to demand that I leave the hall, otherwise he would use force, after which he began to push me out of the hall. I said that his demands were illegal and I would write a complaint to the chairman of the court.

Since I was going to leave anyway, I left the hall, but realized that I did not remember the number of his badge, and the bailiff did not introduce himself to me. I opened the door to write down the number of the bailiff’s badge, but he hit me with the door and said that he would not give me any number and that I should get out.

I left to write a complaint, but he jumped out after me and aggressively demanded that I go with him, he will draw up an administrative protocol against me. I, of course, complied.

The bailiff did not introduce himself and showed me his ID only after the senior bailiff demanded it from him. It’s funny that the bailiff’s last name turned out to be Kotov: as they say, not all Kotovs are equally useful.

I didn’t even have a passport with me, only a lawyer’s card, they didn’t establish my identity. He drew up a protocol stating that I allegedly shouted something during the meeting, tried to disrupt it, and did not respond to the chairman’s comments. Anyone who knows me understands the absurdity of this protocol.

Junior bailiff Kotov decided that it was a good idea to invite two more bailiffs as witnesses. Here I agree, the idea is really promising: if it becomes widespread, then the investigator will no longer rack his brains about where to get an intern to work as a witness. He will simply call a couple of his investigator friends to the search, they will sign what is necessary, they are legally literate and understanding people.

I still had some hope that junior police officer Kotov’s common sense or instinct of self-preservation would prevail and he would not proceed with the protocol - it was pure falsification, and poorly concocted at that. But he made it more interesting: the bailiff completely rewrote the protocol in my absence.

He brought him “into human form,” as he understands this “human form.” He added that I allegedly refused to sign and explain, and also did not want to take a copy of the protocol. And now I have two different protocols in my hands - their version, and the one that I managed to photograph before they took it away.

In general, I think all this was done to prevent me from filing a complaint about the illegal actions of the bailiff to the chairman of the court, which I immediately promised him, or at least to insure myself in this case. But in the end, in addition to the complaint to the chairman of the court, I also filed a statement with the Investigative Committee - about abuse of power, falsification of evidence in the case of an administrative offense.

But you need to be able to see the good in everything: it is now obvious that no “anti-Covid measures” are working in the courts. Otherwise, why would you invent all this nonsense with “an attempt to disrupt the meeting” if you could just write about Covid? So there should be listeners at open court hearings! Anything else is illegal.