Double Jeopardy: Putin's Vengeful Miscarriage of Justice
Former U.S. Ambassador Marc Ginsberg comments that the Kremlin inspired vengeance knows no limits when it comes to the miscarriage of justice committed by Russian authorities against political prisoners Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.
The charges are so ludicrous that the Kremlin was forced to remove the original prosecutors who drew up the charges to work on yet another contrived set of charges - neither of which can pass any smell test of rudimentary justice. To appease Putin's orders, Russian authorities are utilizing a range of extra-judicial and unethical tactics, including blackmail, and the intimidation of others to manipulate "evidence" to convict the two yet again.
The trumped-up case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev is all too illustrative of the decay of democracy, due process, the rule of law and human rights that has occurred in Putin's Russia. The manipulated trials against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev starkly reveal the extent to which Putin will stoop to undermine Russia's democratic institutions to serve his own parochial quest for power and prevent anyone or anything from daring to challenge his autocratic rule.