Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (31 page)

This is a bluff. In the preceding hearings it has already been established that The Cadet has nothing of the sort.

Judge:
But previously you said you took Murdalov away from the compound of the Temporary Office, after which he disappeared. Why are you denying that now?

The Cadet:
I said it because Moroz put psychological pressure on me when he was questioning me.

Prosecutor Rozetov
(quietly and bitterly): Moroz has since been murdered.

Judge Mezhidov:
Did you complain about Moroz’s actions?

The Cadet:
I decided it was better not to.

The tale of Moroz’s “psychological pressure” is just more nonsense, and here we need a brief digression. In 2001, when The Cadet was summoned by Moroz to his first questionings at the Grozny Prosecutor’s Office, the Khanties turned up in force and surrounded the building, pointing their rifles and grenade launchers at it throughout the time The Cadet was with Moroz. While he was being questioned, they rampaged through the building threatening to take revenge on everybody who worked there. There certainly was psychological pressure,
but it was not coming from the Prosecutors – instead it was being brought to bear on them.

Judge Mezhidov:
Who was putting pressure on you in Nizhnevartovsk? When you were there you were no longer in Chechnya.

The Cadet:
Prosecutors Din and Leushin, who came to question me from the Chechen Republic. (Leushin has also been murdered.)

The Cadet swaps his nauseating lachrymosity for a loutish tone, and periodically jabs his finger threateningly at the judge. He announces, “I think Murdalov was beaten by Taimaskhanov [Salim Taimaskhanov, an officer at the October Office]. It was Taimaskhanov took him off somewhere out of the holding cell.”

Judge:
You gave no testimony against either Moroz or Taimaskhanov while they were alive, and immediately changed your testimony when you learned they had been killed. How is that to be explained?

The Cadet:
If you are being tortured for days on end you will sign anything. I had no choice.

From his seat Astemir Murdalov asks pointedly, “And did our people have any choice?”

Finally the lawyers begin to run out of patience. Prosecutor Rozetov asks the judge to read out Lapin’s previous testimony so as to remind him of what he said, since there are major discrepancies. Judge Mezhidov begins reading out the records of previous questioning of The Cadet, conducted in Nizhnevartovsk, his place of residence; in Pyatigorsk; in Grozny; in different places and with different investigators: “I refuse the services of a lawyer. I can conduct my own defence.” “I plead not guilty to the charges.” “I have given this evidence voluntarily.” “I am prepared to repeat this testimony in the presence of those it refers to.”

The Cadet pushes the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code about on the table. He is annoyed and makes no attempt to conceal it, but the judge continues.

“Question from the Investigator:
‘Who is influencing you? Why do you keep changing your testimony?’

Reply:
‘Nobody is influencing me. I am changing my testimony now for the first time because I didn’t take the proceedings seriously before.’ ”

That last revealing remark really is the truth. The vast majority of federals in Chechnya never for a moment imagine that the criminal law might be applied to them for abducting and murdering the civilian population. Among them, anyone who has killed a Chechen is a hero; a coward is anyone afraid to kill one. This has been going on for five years and The Cadet, who is suddenly facing justice, is the sole exception to this impunity. Several times during the November court hearings The Cadet repeated, “I never thought this would be taken seriously,” so he lied through his teeth again and again.

The next hearing of the case will be on December 15, when witnesses for the prosecution are to be questioned.

THE CADET GETS LONGER THAN BUDANOV: THE FIRST TRIAL OF A WAR CRIMINAL HAS ENDED

March 31, 2005

On March 29 the Chairman of the October District Court in Grozny, Maierbek Mezhidov, finally passed sentence in the case of Sergey Lapin. The trial lasted one and a half years, and at times had looked like collapsing.

The charge against Lapin, the sentence, and the circumstances in which a war criminal has eventually been found guilty in Grozny, are without precedent. This is the first time in the entire history of the Second Chechen War that a criminal case for something very common – the abduction and torture of a civilian – has been brought against a federal officer in Chechnya.

The conviction was extremely difficult to achieve, and only the principled
position of the Supreme Court of Russia made it possible to withstand immense pressure from the Interior Ministry. The militia’s Ministry at first did everything it could to ensure that Lapin was tried anywhere other than in Chechnya. Later, when the Supreme Court refused to back down, it blatantly tried to intimidate those taking part in the Grozny trial.

However, both Judge Mezhidov and Prosecutor Vladimir Rozetov stood their ground. The result is that Lapin will serve 11 years in a strict-regime labor colony, with a further three-year ban on working in the law enforcement agencies. An interlocutory ruling was addressed to those in charge of the Khanty-Mansiysk Interior Affairs Directorate, who did their utmost to obstruct the course of justice and conceal brutal crimes.

Details will follow in our next issue.

LAPIN, A BRUTAL TORTURER, FOUND GUILTY BUT REFUSES TO IMPLICATE HIS ACCOMPLICES

April 4, 2005

As already reported, on March 29 in Grozny sentence was passed in the case of Sergey Lapin (alias “The Cadet”). The torturer was sentenced to 11 years in a strict-regime labor camp. Let us first present some quotations from the verdict:

“Lapin, receiving Murdalov into his custody from Investigator Zhuravlyov, took the former into his office where, for several hours, together with other colleagues unidentified by the investigation, he beat Murdalov, inflicting numerous blows with his hands, feet, and also a rubber PR 73 truncheon on different parts of his body, causing him injury in the form of cranio-cerebral trauma accompanied by pathological life-threatening states, namely, a prolonged loss of consciousness, convulsions and respiratory failure. When the officers at the holding cell, having observed Murdalov’s physical injuries, refused to accommodate him, Lapin wrote an explanatory report in Murdalov’s name maintaining that the injuries had been
sustained by Murdalov when he fell from the equivalent of his own height.”

“Witness N.G. Malyukin (the then medical officer at the Interior Affairs Temporary Office) testified that on January 2, 2001 at about 9:00 p.m. he examined Murdalov in the holding cell. He was present in the cell with Murdalov until midnight. During this time Murdalov had several fits. All the muscles of his body contracted violently, he clenched his teeth, and rolled his eyes. He ceased breathing and was unconscious. Malyukin gave Murdalov four injections. At about midnight he left the cell.”

“Witness K.D. Khadayev (a cellmate) explained to the court that on the evening of January 2 Lapin, with three or four others, brought Murdalov to the holding cell. Murdalov could not stand. His right ear had been ripped and was hanging off by the skin. His arm had been broken and his clothing was soiled. A doctor examined Murdalov, and he heard the doctor telling the senior officer, Prilepin, that Murdalov had a compound fracture of the arm, cranio-cerebral trauma, crushed testicles, and was in need of urgent surgical intervention because he would not survive with such injuries. The doctor left. Half an hour later the individuals detained with him in the cell began shouting for the duty officer and informed him that Murdalov was dying. The officer advised them to pray for him, in accordance with Muslim ritual. Murdalov remained in this moribund state until the morning of January 3, when Lapin, Prilepin and several other officers dragged him away. He was incapable of standing. The witness was certain that with such injuries Murdalov must have died and that the militia officers hid his body. Lapin was exceptionally brutal in his torture of detainees. Detainees Dalayev and Gazhayev told him they had been tortured with electricity, clubs and hammers by him. Dalayev had flesh torn from his chest with pliers, had dogs set on him, and was beaten as a nail was hammered into his collar bone. While being tortured he was asked where resistance fighters could be found.”

“Witness S.K. Batalov testified that in the course of checking the statement by plaintiff Astemir Murdalov, members of the Prosecutor’s Office discovered on territory adjacent to the October Interior Affairs
Temporary Office the bodies of three boys who had been seen riding bicycles in the vicinity. The bodies were mutilated, with their eyes gouged out and their scalps removed. A separate criminal case has been opened in respect of the unidentified individuals who conspired with Lapin to commit these crimes.”

“On the morning of January 3, Lapin, fearing that the physical injuries he had inflicted on Murdalov would become known, conspiring with officers not identified by the investigation, signed Murdalov’s name on an order for his release from the holding cell in the box for the detainee’s signature; and also on the record of the personal search of Murdalov in the box confirming items returned and received. Then officers of the October Interior Affairs Temporary Office not identified by the investigation, acting with the knowledge and consent of Lapin, took Murdalov from the holding cell and drove him away to an unknown destination.”

It is clear what happened. The witnesses’ testimony, accepted by the court, leaves no possibility of doubt, but where is the victim? That is the overriding question. Zelimkhan Murdalov remains one of the disappeared, and the trial has done nothing to clarify that issue. For over four years, many people did everything they could to bring about this verdict. They tracked Lapin down when he was on the run. They discredited medical certificates when he tried to pretend he was too ill to appear in court. They endured the thuggish behaviour of Lapin and his colleagues from the Khanty-Mansiysk Interior Affairs Directorate at the hearings. What was it all for? A sentence of 11 years in a strict-regime labor camp?

Of course not. The Murdalov family began this almost hopeless campaign against the system – something which before them none of the thousands of families in the same situation in Chechnya had had the courage to do (and still haven’t) – because they wanted to find Zelimkhan. The Murdalovs expected the state to provide the answer to that question because Lapin is a government employee.

They have had no reply. From time to time during the trial Lapin, addressing Astemir, Zelimkhan’s father, only repeated, “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill him.” Or again, “I am only here to prove to the
father that I did not kill his son.” Judge Mezhidov did ask, “Was he killed? If so, who killed him? And if not, where is he now?” He got no answer, and could do no more. Under our present Criminal Procedure Code, a judge has no right to enquire into anything beyond the charges brought by the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Prosecutors’ Offices of the Chechen Republic and of the Southern Federal Region not only brought no further charges, but even conducted the case in a way that enabled Lapin’s fellow sadists to remain “unidentified.” Even though the testimony of witnesses named Lapin’s direct superiors, Prilepin and Kondakov, who were both present while Lapin’s crimes were being committed, the Prosecutor’s Office directed that neither of them should figure in the trial. They were not cited as co-defendants. The court could do nothing about it: the law was on the side of the torturers.

This means that the sentence passed is a compromise between justice and those federal security officers’ legal immunity. It is less than just, only half a result. It will be satisfactory only when Zelimkhan Murdalov or his body is found, and that will happen only when Prilepin and Kondakov, and perhaps somebody higher up the chain of command who was giving instructions, are put in the dock.

The trial has highlighted once more the disgraceful fact that in Russia the abduction of people by state employees, and extra-judicial penalties meted out by them (our Abu Ghraib), continue because the state, in the guise of the Prosecutor’s Office, covers up for those who have enough stars on their epaulettes. The state does not search for the disappeared, and families are thrown back entirely on their own resources.

Who paid for this case? How was it possible to achieve this verdict? The Murdalovs had a good lawyer. The trial itself lasted a year and a half and was preceded by a long, hard investigation. A good lawyer needs to be paid, the more so because a major part of the work on the case had to be done in the Supreme Court in Moscow, which necessitated a Moscow lawyer. For the first time in a trial taking place in the zone of the “anti-terrorist operation,” a Muscovite and, importantly,
a Russian lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, was representing the interests of a Chechen family. Markelov was a pioneer. Everyone who saw how he conducted himself in Grozny admired his courage, self-possession and professionalism in some extremely uncomfortable situations.
^*

So who paid Markelov, who had to fly constantly, sometimes every week, to the North Caucasus? Let it be recorded in the history of the Second Chechen War that the entire financial burden of Lapin’s trial was borne by the London Office of Amnesty International, the famous international human rights organization. Amnesty took on that burden because nobody else would, not a single Russian civil rights or voluntary organization. Chechen businessmen, without exception, also spectacularly ignored the opportunity of supporting such a crucial, precedent-setting trial, one vitally important for thousands of Chechen families in the Republic who find themselves in the Murdalovs’ situation. Alas, rather than do anything so constructive, rich Chechens cheerfully dig deep when the federals demand ransom for someone they have abducted. They pay the ransom, providing financial support for the federals’ lawlessness and the hierarchy of state terrorism. It is a shame.