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Darya Pylnova: Hello. You are watching Glasnost Territory,
and the guests of this studio at the Press Center of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev are
Jens Siegert, a political scientist, journalist and head of the Heinrich Böll Foundation office,
and Sergey Nikitin, director of the Moscow office of Amnesty International.
Sergey Nikitin: Hello.
Jens Siegert: Good afternoon.
Darya Pylnova: How do you, as a political scientist, see this trial? Being here in Russia, how do you assess it?
Jens Siegert: With the second trial the problem consists in that the charges are so absurd
that I think that even those who have brought those charges feel somewhat ashamed,
and at this point no one knows for certain how to end all this.
A conviction will sound rather ridiculous – not for the arrested, of course. But it will look simply hilarious.
And at the same time, from the point of view of the authorities, it appears equally impossible to set Khodorkovsky free.
Darya Pylnova: In general, could such a trial be possible in Germany?
Jens Siegert: I hope very much that it could not; I am almost convinced that it could not.
Darya Pylnova: And why?
Jens Siegert: Thank god, the institution of the independent judiciary exists in Germany,
and this is not only a formality, it is nor simply written in the constitution that the judiciary is independent.
People here do not believe that it works, and it does not work, and in Germany we have experience
that the judiciary works and the law-based state works more or less.
There are, of course, errors there, but it works more or less; in this sense one may find justice in court.
Darya Pylnova: Let me remind our viewers that Bundestag deputies from the Green Party
have on many occasions visited the Khamovniki Court as well as other politicians,
who have shared their impressions.
Their basic idea was that there are great problems with law at the trial.
Jens Siegert: Yes. That understanding is present in all the factions in the German Bundestag.
The Green Party is close to my foundation.
Darya Pylnova: A question for Sergey Nikitin: What is the stance of Amnesty International
with respect to the case of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev?
Sergey Nikitin: Practically from the very beginning, that is, since 2003, when Lebedev and Khodorkovsky were arrested,
Amnesty International has been stating regularly that we have no doubts that there is a political context here.
Looking at the court hearings in Moscow, we have also been noting the lack of the very fact of a fair trial.
Darya Pylnova: A recent report issued by your organization in fact says the same, doesn’t it?
Sergey Nikitin: It describes the situation with human rights in practically all countries of the world,
approximately 159 of them, and there is an article on Russia;
even though small in volume, it includes a separate little chapter on unfair trial
and several paragraphs in that chapter are indeed devoted to the trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.
Darya Pylnova: What is the reaction to the trial in Russia and abroad?
Sergey Nikitin: In my subjective view, as I see it, you know, let me give you an example:
we were holding a picket in defense of a prisoner of conscience, an Azerbaijani journalist,
and an old lady, a woman of about 70, stopped by, and first we talked abouthow difficult it must
be to be a prisoner of conscience in Azarbaijan, and practically immediately she switched to talking about Khodorkovsky.
That’s like a typical illustration: an average Muscovite who happened to be passing by at that moment.
Darya Pylnova: Mikhail Khodorkovsky has said in a recent interview that “my case is important, not per se,
but as a symbol of what is happening in Russia.”
What is the situation with political prisoners really like today?
Sergey Nikitin: I guess I should note that the term “political prisoners” was used by Amnesty International for a long time.
Often, there were people who were calling for a change of the system, people who had different political views,
differing from the views of the authorities of some or other country.
The situation was typical of the 1960s and 1970s, when the authorities,
to get rid of that nuisance, a certain politician, simply used to arrest him and put him in prison – that’s all;
the person would vanish from the horizon, and those at the helm could breathe a sigh of relief.
Today, Amnesty International demands an immediate and fair trial with respect to any arrested person.
For this reason, the designation “political prisoner” has been removed.
Nonetheless, Russian human rights champions do use it, and we understand them – they are in their right to use it.
That is why we cannot talk about Khodorkovsky as a political prisoner,
because Amnesty International has stopped using that designation.
The term “political prisoner” is a thing of the past as far as Amnesty International is concerned, and we no longer use it.
It is used, as I have said, by Russian human rights champions.
Darya Pylnova: What are Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev for Amnesty International?
Sergey Nikitin: They are people who are in prison and who are on trial and whose trial is far from perfect.
They are people whose case has a political implication, which is absolutely clear to us.
That is how we formulate the situation with Lebedev and Khodorkovsky.
Darya Pylnova: Do you follow the developments at the trial – on the internet or in the media, maybe –
and what events of the past week have impressed you most of all?
Sergey Nikitin: Often enough, all that looks like a very strange show, a tragic one,
because here we deal with a case when people have been imprisoned for seven years.
As a citizen of the Russian Federation, I feel ashamed and sad to see how the trial progresses
and the behavior of the prosecutors.
Darya Pylnova: Mr. Siegert?
Jens Siegert: I also follow attentively the trial and have been in the courtroom maybe 10 times,
usually accompanied by German deputies of the Bundestag or the European Parliament.
The impressions are always grim enough, all of them, and so are those of our guests
who go there for the first time.
They are especially struck by that box, in which [the defendants] sit.
Darya Pylnova: It is also called “aquarium.”
Jens Siegert: Right. I think it is inadmissible with respect to people who pose no threat.
They are not serial killers, who could jump out and run.
I was struck when Mikhail Khodorkovsky announced that he would go on a hunger strike
until the president learned that Platon Lebedev’s and his pretrial detention had been extended.
Darya Pylnova: The term of arrest.
Jens Siegert: The term of arrest, which is directly at odds with a new law, recently initiated by President Medvedev and passed.
And that the very same day, in the evening, Medvedev’s press secretary announced
that the president was aware of the situation.
That was an event that, I think, no one had expected, and neither had I.
The second most interesting thing for me was the testimony by Viktor Gerashchenko,
former chairman of the Central Bank and later board chairman of Yukos,
because he spoke very clearly and very succinctly about the absurd nature of the current charges.
Indeed, he talked about the forced auctioning of Yukos, first, to that one-day company, BaykalFinanceGroup,
and that one-day company resold its package of Yukos stock to Rosneft;
no one in Rosneft complained that oil was missing, and it is that oil that is the topic of this trial.
That indeed is striking.
That explains everything very easily, and all the same nothing is happening.