Khodorkovsky On Trial: Impressions of a Show Trial
Marieluise Beck (Member of Parliament, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) travelled to Moscow to observe the second trial against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former principal shareholder of the oil company YUKOS, and his business partner Platon Lebedev. Each was sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment in 2005 in a trial that on no account complied with constitutional standards and was obviously politically motivated. The second trial is on the verge of taking a similar course, particularly because the charge has absurd proportions and is completely contradictory to the first charge.
Her impressions from the courtroom:
April 27th, 2009 A day in the county court Khamovniki in Moscow. The great "corporate criminal case" against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev is being heard; the sum in dispute amounts to $20 billion.
The court building is unimposing and the court room is small and shabby. Brawny policeman ‘secure' the room. One would rather not get in their way.
For 18 days the prosecution read out the charge - an attrition strategy not only for the defense team and the accused, but also for the potential observers of the trial, whose patience is supposed to come to an end given such a marathon.
However, a small group has not yet given up and attends the trial. The benches offer only little room for observers, about the space a school class would occupy.
Among them is Marina Filippovna, Khodorkovsky's mother, a white-haired elderly lady. Grigory Javlinski, former president of the democratic Yabloko party, also stops by for a few hours.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are led into the court room in handcuffs and are then put into a glass cage which is barred at the ceiling. They look grey and tired. After all they have been in prison for over five years, the two last of them in remand, i.e. no participation in the prison yard walks, no physical activity, small cells, marginal communication.
It evokes an oppressive feeling to imagine that these two men have to live with the thought of disappearing in prison for more time to come after the trial.
There are eight defenders in front of the cage, some of them experienced human rights advocates. They know that they act within constitutional means of defense, but that there is no rule of law on the part of the court and of the prosecution.
The prosecutors wear uniforms and read out evidence for hours. The judge makes an inconsiderable impression, even stoic, like a poor blighter. No vain showmanship for being in charge of such an important trial. One wonders whether he has any judicial latitude at all? After he has halted the legal proceedings, does he call somebody who orders him to deny the defense's motion to reject the case?
The defense team's motion is rejected - a visibly ambitious young prosecutor continues to read out the means of evidence. Impassively she reads out page after page.
The files comprise several cubic meters - 14 volumes, 3500 pages. However, the key data of the trial is easily summarized. The charges account for embezzlement of 350 million tons of oil worth $20 million, money laundering of $21.4 million.
If these charges accorded with the facts, the accusations of tax fraud of billions of dollars raised in the first trial would be obsolete. Khodorkovsky's company would not have had any revenue that would have been taxable. The sentence to eight years of imprisonment from the first trial and the new charge are therefore mutually exclusive.
There are many indications that Khodorkovsky's political engagement led to his downfall and that Putin wanted to get rid of a disagreeable rival. This is what differentiates him from other oligarchs which are not put on trial by the Kremlin.
Insiders therefore assume that Khodorkovsky has no chance of being released as long as Putin has the power to render him ‘innocuous'.
A whiff of futility that is characteristic of political trials in authoritarian regimes lies over the court room. While passing off as formally correct, everybody knows that the outcome of the trial is not decided in the court room.
Russia is a member of the Council of Europe and of the OSCE and has therefore committed itself to principles of constitutional legality. A large extent of the new president's credibility at home and abroad depends on the outcome of this trial. If Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are relegated from the Russian public life once again, Medvedev's promises of reform would appear insubstantial.