LONDON CASE FURTHER UNDERMINES MOSCOW’S CLAIMS

LONDON CASE FURTHER UNDERMINES MOSCOW’S CLAIMS

The credibility of Russia’s legal and political system suffered fresh blows during the latest, and probably final, week of hearings in the London extradition case of Akhmed Zakaev. Appearing as a witness for the prosecution was Akhmar Zavgaev, who represents Chechnya in the upper house of the federal parliament. Under cross-examination by Zakaev’s attorney, Edward Fitzgerald, Zavgaev claimed that he simply did not know about such widely acknowledged realities as the disappearance of Chechen civilians without a trace. Asked about torture, he said that “we don’t have filtration camps, it was the fascists who had filtration camps.”

In a September 15 column for the Guardian, David Hearst concluded that “the Russian expert witnesses have found the tables of justice turned on them. Instead of Mr. Zakaev being on trial, the rule of law in Russia has come under scrutiny.” He quoted a British lawyer “close to the case” as observing that “this is the first time that any Russian official has been questioned under oath about Chechnya, about their claim to be engaged in anti-terrorist operations, rather than all-out war, about the existence of a parallel system of detention in Chechnya, run by the ministry of the interior and the FSB, where suspects are tortured and killed.”

An anti-Moscow Chechen source told Hearst that the case was “manna from heaven….If we win this case, the evidence that emerged here could form the basis for a referral of Russia for war crimes in Chechnya to the international criminal court.”