Russia faces stern rebuke over judicial standards

The prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon on trial in Moscow, showed that Russia was unable to meet its international commitments to operate an independent judicial system, a senior human rights envoy said yesterday.


Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, special rapporteur for the legal affairs and human rights committee of the Council of Europe, the inter-governmental human rights organisation, said Russia was having "great difficulties" in fulfilling the standards to which it was bound by the European convention on human rights.

During a second fact-finding mission to Moscow which ended yesterday, she said there was a "political background" to the case brought by the authorities against Mr Khodorkovsky, and she highlighted a series of concerns that prevented him and his co-defendant, Platon Lebedev, from receiving a fair trial.

The comments of Mrs Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a former German justice minister, mark a further escalation in recent negative western reaction to Russia. Earlier this week, she was one of 114 European and US political and cultural leaders who signed an open letter criticising Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, for undermining his country's fragile democracy and harming its foreign relations.

In an interview with the Financial Times yesterday, she also expressed concern about the related case brought by the authorities against Alexei Pichugin, a senior security official who worked for Mr Khodorkovsky, whose jury trial on murder charges will open today but be held in secret.

She said the authorities had provided only general "national security" justifications for why Mr Pichugin's case would not be public, and expressed concern about his detention in Lefortovo, a special prison run by the FSB, the Russian security police, since last June.

When Russia joined the Council of Europe in 1997, it committed itself to implement the European convention on human rights but has failed to apply some of its provisions, including placing all prisons under control of the justice ministry.

Mr Pichugin's defence lawyers claim his trial is to be held in secret because of the poor quality of the evidence, which they say is based largely on questionable indirect testimony from a convicted murderer. They say Mr Pichugin was illegally injected with psycho-tropic drugs during interrogation.

Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger's critical remarks went far further than her previous comments, and came ahead of a report she is due to prepare for November, before discussions at the Council of Europe's January plenary session.

She said the authorities had refused her access to top government officials, or to Mr Khodorkovsky and his co-defendants. She was allowed to attend an open hearing of his trial this week, but the judge barred her from talking to him.

In May, the European Court of Human Rights rebuked Russia for abusing the rights of Vladimir Gusinsky, an exiled businessman forced to sell his Media Most empire in exchange for charges being dropped.
By Andrew Jack in Moscow
(From Financial Times)