Khodorkovsky: Conveyor Belt of Russian Justice Legalizes Abuse
On this day, one year ago, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev were marched, under high security, into the Khamovnicheskiy Court to begin the pre-trial proceedings for their second show trial. One year on, Mikhail Khodorkovsky writes in Nezavisimaya Gazeta about the "conveyer belt" that is the Russian judicial system: "If you have become the feedstock raw material for this conveyor belt, then at the end of it there is always a Kalashnikov machine-gun"
He writes that any illusion that "somebody someplace is actually going to try and figure something out and get to the bottom of your case" is erroneous and that the mere absence of guilt, or even of a crime, is no barrier to the conveyer belt. Judges who actually risk acquitting a defendant risk "not only finding [themselves] an outcast within the system, but also getting labeled as "questionable" or "dubious."
Khodorkovsky also highlights a particularly absurd feature of the Russian "justice" system: "they may beat you, withhold medicine and competent medical treatment, abuse you boorishly or with sophistication - but they will always have you sign on the dotted line that you have been duly informed of your right not to have to testify against yourself."
The only thing the system pays attention to in the Criminal Code is the maximum terms of punishment. The Russian judicial system is not based on a presumption of innocence, and only 0.8% of trials result in an acquittal while just over 20% of jury acquittals are overturned.
"Ideas we have 'on the outside' about how the police, the procuracy, the courts and the Federal Service for the Execution of Punishments (FSIN) are some kind of independent structures are absolutely erroneous". The system is constructed for a sole purpose: "legalized violence."
Khodorkovsky gives a stark warning that the "siloviki conveyor belt, which has undermined justice is truly the gravedigger of modern Russian statehood. Because it turns many thousands of the country's most active, sensible and independent citizens against this statehood - with enviable regularity".