Radio Liberty reports on Saturday’s gathering

Radio Liberty, 25.10.2008

Programme presented by Marina Dubovik with the participation of the radio station’s correspondent Mumin Shakirov.

Marina Dubovik: Today is the fifth anniversary of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s arrest. Russia’s rights activists and politicians are demanding a review of that notorious and the release of all those convicted and detained as a result. A public gathering to mark the anniversary took place this Saturday at the Andrei Sakharov Museum in Moscow. Tell us what happened there, Mumin.

Mumin Shakirov: There were about a hundred people at the Sakharov Museum — rights activists, scientists and public figures. This is part of an ongoing protest. A few days back, as we already reported, a letter was published entitled “Punitive justice on trial”, signed by rights activists such as Lev Ponomaryov and Svetlana Gannushkina and scientists Yury Ryzhov and Alexei Yablokov. That declaration once again raised doubts about the sentences imposed on Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his former colleagues.

At the Sakharov Museum today a second declaration was discussed. It concerned not so much those caught up in the Yukos case as the plight of political prisoners in Russia as a whole. This two page document has now been issued under the title “Freedom for Russia’s political prisoners”. There are several names mentioned there: the scientists Igor Sutyagin, Valentin Danilov, and Academician Igor Reshetin; insurance agent and third-year university student Zara Murtazalieva, who is Chechen in origin; and a villager from Shali in Chechnya, Zaurbek Talkhigov ... Well, there’s a long list. There are many more names but for the time being Russia’s human rights activists decided to focus on those individuals.

Naturally, people asked at the meeting why the regime is not reacting to protests by human rights activists and public figures, why it pretends that all is well in Russia. A spokesman for the Public Committee in Defence of Scientists Ernst Cherny tried to provide an answer.

Ernst Cherny: Let’s look at the last important occasion, 7 October, when we remembered Anna Politkovskaya. About 500 people, at most, came to the event. As long as 100, 200 or 500 of us turn out to protest they’ll look out from [FSB headquarters on] Lubyanka Square at this meagre crowd and laugh: “Do these people expect us to back down? It’s a joke.” If 100,000 people turned out, as used to happen in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I’m sure that the next day the situation would change. No one would dare fabricate criminal cases, imprison well-known people who have made major contributions, i.e. take the first steps towards the development of a market economy.

Mumin Shakirov: Of course, there was talk about the Yukos case. The most striking contribution came from Karinna Moskalenko, one of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyers who often travels to Chita where her client is serving an eight-year sentence. In February 2007 new charges were brought against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev. They were accused of stealing all the oil produced by Yukos. “They began a new investigation,” says Moskalenko, “but there has not yet been a trial.” It’s a stalemate, she says, trying to disentangle what it means.

Karinna Moskalenko: They rushed everyone to be ready in February 2007, and yet here we are in October 2008: why have we still not got to court? Are we adding anything to the case files? Are we clarifying some of the formulations? A third set of charges have been lodged, they say. Well, we thought, our clients will now be accused of a brutal murder. No, they came back with exactly the same accusation. It has been modified but, as Khodorkovsky noted, after making a most coherent analysis, with none of the stupidities removed. These stupidities are insuperable even for the obedient machine that produces these accusations and then, supposedly, confirms them in court. They cannot advance. We wait. The prosecution has reached stalemate. The prosecutor should sign the charges and forward the case to the courts but he cannot do so.

Meanwhile the defence is being denied things that no one else is denied. Why refuse Khodorkovsky whose case, which is clear, will be examined by the European Court of Human Rights? We submit petitions that cannot be rejected. We say, if the charges concern economic crimes then we have the right to compare all the data: the balance figures, the figures from the data base, and then compare them with the expert assessment. I say, “Hand them over to me!” They say: “We shan’t.” You are in prison, stay there. “Hand them over so I can dispute the charges,” Khodorkovsky says just the same.

The prosecution have no evidence for their charges. Their hundreds of volumes do not contain them. Yet evidence for the defence does not exist because the investigators will not release it. That is the stalemate situation in which we exist. It’s positively indecent!

Mumin Shakirov: That was Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Karinna Moskalenko.