Суд мести

The prosecution's address fails to refute Pichugin's statements to this effect.

As evidence of Pichugin's role in arranging attempts on Kolesov's and Kostina's lives, the prosecution cites testimony from co-defendant Peshkun, whose story was that Gorin offered him money to commit these offences. And that he only learned from Gorin that the man organising the attacks was Pichugin.

But neither the investigation nor the court were able to substantiate this uncorroborated story, because Gorin had never been questioned about it. And the investigation failed to find any other evidence that could clearly point to Pichugin being involved in these crimes.

As for the charge that Pichugin arranged the Gorins' murder, this fails to stand up to any examination at all and goes beyond all bounds of common sense. The motive was not established, the perpetrators unidentified, and the victims themselves not found.

The only person to testify directly against Pichugin was Korovnikov, who is serving a life sentence at Ognennyy island for a series of brutal murders and rapes. His testimony is inconsistent, contradictory and completely without corroboration, for which reason it must be seen as unreliable.

Nor did the prosecution present to the court evidence to substantiate the involvement in these crimes of the unidentified senior officials from Yukos, or the existence of a plot between them and Pichugin.

It must be acknowledged that the prosecution's address contains no analysis or evaluation whatsoever of this so-called evidence.

Therefore one fails to understand how, given this body of evidence, the Procuracy General could take this case to the Moscow City Court or how the court - albeit with a jury - could hear it in closed session. The court could have declined to agree with the prosecution and could have decided to hear the case openly and transparently.

Was the Procuracy General confident of winning its case? So what inspired that confidence? In my opinion, a great deal - most of all, the clearly-defined judicial hierarchy that like the Procuracy General itself is subordinated to THE AUTHORITIES.

The case was pursued in a way that violated Pichugin's right to a fair trial as guaranteed in article 6 of the European Human Rights Convention, which includes the right to fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial court constituted in accordance with the law.

Much has already been said about the extent to which that hearing was open and public. But there are also strong doubts that the court was independent, impartial and lawfully constituted.

Firstly, neither Pichugin nor his defence team were aware of the grounds on which Moscow City Court chairwoman Yegorova appointed Judge Olikhver and not someone else to hear the case.

In Europe, cases have long been allocated by special computer programmes so that nobody involved in a trial may suspect any interest or prejudice on the part of the judge. Yet we are still unable to exclude the personal factor in this key element of justice.

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