Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (16 page)

The verdict was announced not in the ordinary magistrates’ courtroom where the case had been heard but in a lofty ceremonial hall with something resembling a throne set at a considerable height. On this the judge seated himself. The translator promised on oath not to lie, and Mr Justice Workman began:

“The Russian Federation seek the extradition of Akhmed Zakayev in respect of some thirteen allegations of conduct which, had it occurred in the United Kingdom, would have amounted to the offences of soliciting persons to murder, three counts of murder, two counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, one count of false imprisonment and six counts of conspiring with others in a course of conduct which would necessarily involve the commission of offences of murder, wounding and hostage taking.

The judge continued:

“I am quite satisfied that the events in Chechnya in 1995 and 1996 amounted in law to an internal armed conflict. Indeed, many observers would have regarded it as a civil war. In support of that decision I have taken into account the scale of fighting – the intense carpet-bombing of Grozny with in excess of 100,000 casualties, the recognition of the conflict in the terms of a cease fire and a peace treaty. I was unable to accept the view expressed by one witness that the actions of the Russian Government in bombing Grozny were counter-terrorist operations.

“Having satisfied myself that this amounted to an internal armed conflict which would fall within the Geneva Convention, I reach the conclusion that those crimes which allege conspiring to seize specific areas of Chechnya by the use of armed force or resistance are not extraditable crimes because the conduct in those circumstances would
not amount to a crime in this country. On that basis I propose to discharge counts 7, 8, 9 and 13.”

The next section of the ruling bears the highly eloquent title “Abuse of Process.” This is more to do with the professional methods of the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office, whose representatives were conspicuous by their absence. Rumors were circulating yesterday that Sergey Fridinsky, who was in charge of the campaign to extradite Zakayev and who had given the President his word that he would be returned, had been warned by the Crown Prosecution Service that an adverse ruling was likely, as a result of which the whole lot of them had decided to absent themselves from their public humiliation.

One can see their point. The evidence of prosecution witnesses was found not to be reliable. It is worth recalling who was in this group which Fridinsky had assembled: Akhmar Zavgayev, a Senator representing Chechnya, currently preparing to enter the Duma; Yury Kalinin, Deputy Minister of Justice responsible for the prison system; Konstantin Krivorotov, Investigator of the Chechen Prosecutor’s Office; Yury Bessarabov, Professor of Law at the Research Institute of the Prosecutor-General’s Office; and Stanislav Iliasov, Russian Government Minister for Chechnya. These individuals should not continue to occupy their posts after such public disgrace.

“The alleged offences on which Mr Zakayev is sought occurred in 1995 and in 1996. The offences would have been apparent to the Authorities at the time, and two witnesses assured me that they made statements to the Prosecution shortly after the event. It was not until some six years later that a decision was made to arrest Mr Zakayev, and it was not until October 25, 2002 that the Russian request for his arrest was circulated by Interpol. Throughout 2001 and 2002 Mr Zakayev acted as a peace envoy, travelling extensively, but his whereabouts were apparently known to the Russian Authorities. Indeed, on November 18, 2001 Mr Zakayev travelled to Moscow Airport in an attempt to negotiate disarmament. He met with senior Government officials who had themselves been reassured that there were no proceedings anticipated against Mr Zakayev. The existence of the decision to
arrest Mr Zakayev taken two months earlier appears to have been overlooked. Mr Fridinsky, the Russian prosecutor in this case, has explained that they had no idea that Mr Zakayev was going to attend a meeting in Moscow. Whilst I do, of course, accept that Mr Fridinsky may not have known, I find it surprising that a warrant for such serious crimes alleged to have been committed by such a well-known person should not have been noticed by the Russian Immigration Authorities.

“In addition to the delay in arrest, it is apparent that there has been delay in the investigation and preparation of the Prosecution’s case. Although two witnesses told me that they had made statements soon after the events, those statements have not been produced or provided to the Defence. With one exception (an unnamed witness) who made a statement on March 13, 2000, the other 11 witnesses made their statements after Mr Zakayev was arrested. In respect of four of those witnesses, their statements were not taken until after the extradition request to Denmark had failed. Note that in the request to Denmark it was being alleged that Mr Zakayev was involved in the Moscow theatre siege and that he had murdered Father Sergius (now known as Father Philip). Both allegations were later withdrawn, and indeed Father Philip has given evidence before me.

“I have also noted that the Kremlin denied the existence of any criminal proceedings against Mr Zakayev when in fact a warrant was still extant. I have noted that the Russian Government continued to negotiate with Mr Zakayev despite the existence of the warrant, and that there was no attempt to extradite Mr Zakayev until the moment of the World Chechen Conference and the Moscow theatre siege. I have also noted the statements of the Russian foreign minister likening Mr Zakayev to Osama Bin Laden.

“When those factors are added together the inevitable conclusion is that it would now be unjust and oppressive to return Mr Zakayev to stand his trial in Russia.

“I found that the evidence given by Mr de Waal, Mr Rybakov and Mr Rybkin was truthful and accurate, and from their evidence I am satisfied that it is more likely than not that the motivation of the
Government of the Russian Federation was and is to exclude Mr Zakayev from continuing to take part in the peace process and to discredit him as a moderate. I therefore find as a fact that the Russian Government are seeking extradition for purposes of prosecuting Mr Zakayev on account of his nationality and his political opinions. I take the view that Mr Zakayev is entitled to the benefit of the protection provided by Section 6(i)(c) [of the European Convention on Extradition].

“With some reluctance I have to come to the inevitable conclusion that if the Authorities are prepared to resort to torturing witnesses there is a substantial risk that Mr Zakayev would himself be subject to torture. I am satisfied that such punishment and detention would be by reason of his nationality and political opinions. I therefore believe that Mr Zakayev is entitled to the benefit of Section 6(i)(d) and should not be returned to face trial in the Russian Federation …

“I am therefore discharging the defendant.”

That is an end to it. The judge is silent, the courtroom animated. People are trying to congratulate Zakayev, but the case is not over yet. Edward Fitzgerald, Zakayev’s defence lawyer, rises to his feet. His concerns extend beyond the law to the financing of all this. Who is going to pay the legal costs? The judge calmly accepts the bills and invoices as is the way in Britain. This means it is clear who is going to pay. The costs of a court case which has lasted almost a year will be payable by the losing side, that is, by you and me, since it is we who employ the officials of the Prosecutor-General’s Office, officials who have failed to learn to work in accordance with the law but excel in carrying out political orders, as the London court has demonstrated.

Each has received his just desserts. Zakayev is free, his passport will be returned to him in the immediate future, and he will again be able to travel at will throughout the world. Representatives of the Crown Prosecution Service of Great Britain who, in accordance with the British judicial system, represented the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office, have strongly advised Mr Fridinsky against thinking of lodging an appeal because it would have no prospect of success and could lead only to
an even more shaming outcome; all the charges have been rejected as without a basis in law, meaning that no new evidence would be accepted. The Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office has egg all over its face.

These, however, are only details. Three important truths were established in London on November 13. The first is that, for the first time in many years of a monstrous war, the federal authorities and the Chechens have been communicating with each other in legal language rather than the language of armed conflict, security sweeps, ambushes and explosions. The forum for this was a British court which demonstrated that it was concerned only with hard evidence and had no interest in political expediency.

The second is that it has been established in a court of law, not in the newspapers or on television, not in the drawing rooms of the establishment or at conferences, after lengthy examination of the evidence for and against now marshalled in several volumes, that, as most of us already knew but were unable to prove, what is happening in Chechnya is not an “anti-terrorist operation” but a war.

The third is that, after the London court ruling, it is impossible to go on pretending that our country is on the road to democracy. There are no reforms; instead we have authoritarianism, subservient courts, torture in places of detention and racial harassment. The framework of international relations is collapsing because it has been shown in court that the system the Russian regime talks about simply does not exist. Russia is a radically different country from the one which the politicians pretend exists. We have a brutal war, racism and violence as the means of resolving all issues.

That is the end of the story of the London court proceedings in respect of Akhmed Zakayev. The Government wanted to show the world how cool we are and how we stand for truth, but succeeded only in showing our true nature. The Russian Government is the laughingstock of Europe because it has no substance, only wild pretensions.

The fact that the court ruling was going to go against the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office became clear in Sheremetievo-II, the Moscow airport from which I was flying to London to hear the verdict.

I handed over my passport. The young frontier guard tapped at his computer for a long time and finally said,

“You have problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“You know yourself.”

“No I don’t.”

What had popped up on his screen was that the bearer of this passport was to be detained and subjected to general unpleasantness and all manner of additional and humiliating searches.

“Why?”

“That’s a military secret,” he replied. One would have liked to think he was joking but there was no hint of a smile.

The woman in charge of the shift arrived, a pretty girl, Yuliya Demina. She took away various things that she had no right to take: my passport, my ticket. She ordered me to stand in a particular place and not to move, and then she went away. She was gone for a very long time and the plane was about to leave. The young guardian of the border came out of his booth and prattled on again about “problems” which “you know yourself.”

“Are you going to have problems coming back in?”

“What do you mean?”

“You might not be allowed back in, for instance.”

It’s the usual approach in this, the era of the Second Chechen War. You can become nobody at any moment, especially if you have witnessed something. No laws are required to do that, as was proven in London, where I was permitted to fly to at the very last moment.

Part III: The Kadyrovs

THE WAR SUPERMARKET. EXTERMINATING CHECHENS IS NOW SELF-SERVICE

June 26, 2000

The Kremlin continues its Michurinist labor of planting and nurturing civil war in Chechnya as assiduously as the late father of Soviet hybridisation. Its most recent contribution was made on June 8, when the President signed an order appointing 49-year-old Akhmat-hadji Kadyrov “Chief of Chechnya” (Director of the Provisional Administration). Kadyrov is associated by most of the population solely with conflict and division. They call him the “middleman Mufti,” the link between Chechen bandits and those highly placed citizens in Moscow whose main priority is to prolong the policy of intimidation in the North Caucasus.

The three weeks since June 8 have served only to confirm the worst predictions regarding Mr Kadyrov’s appointment. The conflict between Chechen and Chechen has flared up with new vigour. The news images are following the same script as when civil war flared up in Tajikistan.

Within these three weeks, only three heads of district administrations out of 18 have agreed to work under the middleman Mufti. Twelve of them sent an abrupt demand to President Putin, the “Letter of the Twelve,” either to change his edict or expect sabotage. When Moscow chose to ignore this, a meeting of administrative heads in Gudermes on June 16 considered a proposal to try to persuade the Center to at least delay Kadyrov’s accession to the throne by a couple of months, until the end of the harvest season. The reason is that people need to be able to harvest the 85,000 hectares they have sowed with such difficulty without the fear that Kadyrov’s coming to power heralds either a renewal in the near future of combat operations or that the Kadyrov gang, whose existence he no longer bothers to deny, will simply set about brazenly filching the harvest, every hectare of which has been watered with blood and tears.

What is more, Chechnya is being abandoned by members of the Provisional Administration led by the already ex-Acting Head, Yakub Deniev. They too first sent a petition to the Kremlin (the “Letter of the Forty-Four”) in which they categorically stated that they would find it morally unacceptable to work under a man who had declared jihad on Moscow only for Moscow to hand him the throne of Chechnya, and who was now also demanding that he should have control of the budget.

Blood has been shed. A well-known Urus Martan imam, Umar Idrisov, has been assassinated, and PR games immediately began in connection with his tragic death. As if in response to orders from above, most of the media declared the Imam to have been a supporter of Kadyrov, which he never was. Indeed, Idrisov was a determined opponent of Kadyrov and refused to recognise him as Mufti or condone his pretensions to being the chosen spiritual leader of Chechnya. People have immediately connected the assassination of the Imam and the lies in the media, and have concluded that Moscow is artificially inflating Kadyrov’s standing, not holding back even from murdering the Imam so that they could pretend he had been martyred because he supported Kadyrov.