Soviet repression, here we go again

[Rain]

Thursday, May 20, 2004. Page 1. The Moscow Times

FSB Critic Trepashkin Jailed for 4 Years

By Anatoly Medetsky
Staff Writer

Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters

Photo: A policeman taking handcuffs off Mikhail Trepashkin, a former
FSB officer who investigated the 1999 apartment bombings and the
Dubrovka siege, in court on Wednesday.


Lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin was sentenced to four years in prison
Wednesday in a move that he and human rights advocates decried as
retribution for his investigation into allegations linking the
Federal Security Service to the 1999 apartment bombings.

After a seven-month closed-door trial, the Moscow Military District
Court found Trepashkin, a former FSB lieutenant colonel, guilty of
divulging state secrets and illegal possession of ammunition.

The charges are based on a search that turned up 26 cartridges in
Trepashkin's apartment in January 2002 and a report from a former FSB
agent that Trepashkin showed him classified documents he had kept
from his time in the service.

Trepashkin, wearing a blue tracksuit emblazoned with the
word "Columbia," showed no visible reaction from the defendant's cage
as the verdict was read out.

Trepashkin's lawyer, Valery Glushenkov, said he would appeal the
verdict and seek a full acquittal.

Prosecutors had demanded Trepashkin be jailed for five years.

Speaking in a quiet, subdued voice from the defendant's cage to
reporters, who were allowed into the court a few minutes before the
judge pronounced sentence, Trepashkin said: "I don't expect anything
good. The case was filed on someone's orders and doesn't stand up to
criticism from a legal point of view."

"It's linked to my work with Sergei Kovalyov's commission," he said,
referring to the Terror 1999 commission investigating the 1999
apartment bombings on Ulitsa Guryanova and Kashirskoye Shosse and the
2002 Dubrovka theater hostage-taking, headed by the then-State Duma
Deputy and human rights advocate. "If I hadn't gotten involved, there
wouldn't have been any case [against me]."

With his security service background, Trepashkin was an important
member of the commission who could provide valuable information
through his contacts and experience, said Alexander Podrabinek,
editor of the Prima News human rights news service, after the
sentencing.

Trepashkin had a theory that the FSB could have had a hand both in
the 1999 apartment bombings and the Dubrovka hostage-taking blamed on
Chechen rebels, an allegation the FSB had denied.

The apartment bombings were part of the reason why then-Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin ordered federal forces back into Chechnya in
1999, a resumption of the war that sent his popularity ratings sky-
high.

Despite the FSB's denial, Wednesday's verdict shows that "the
authorities are clearly afraid of an open and independent
investigation of the 1999 bombings and Dubrovka," Podrabinek said.

"Now we have yet another political prisoner," said Lev Ponomaryov,
head of the For Human Rights movement.

Podrabinek said that the commission's investigation had wound down
after Trepashkin's jailing. "It's not ruled out that we will never
find out what actually happened," he said.

The sentencing is also a signal to others to avoid questioning the
official statements on the commission's allegations, a "signal that
we hope won't be heard," Podrabinek said.

Trepashkin's misfortunes began after he first publicly voiced the
apartment bombings allegation, even before joining Kovalyov's
commission, on RenTV television in late 2001.

Shortly after the interview aired, police found the ammunition in a
box for threads and needles in clear view on a shelf in Trepashkin's
apartment, Glushenkov said. A few days before the police raid, a
former FSB colleague of Trepashkin's had visited his apartment,
Glushenkov said.

The lawyer said the ammunition was planted.

The Main Military Prosecutor's Office filed a criminal case against
Trepashkin but didn't jail him pending trial. Trepashkin was invited
to work for Kovalyov's commission in the summer of 2002.

The second count on Trepashkin's indictment -- divulging state
secrets -- appeared after the Dubrovka siege. Trepashkin then
revealed four classified documents about the way the FSB operates to
Viktor Shebalin, a former FSB officer he knew, prosecutors said.

Glushenkov said Trepashkin had given Shebalin only one document and
asked him to pass it on to the FSB because he believed the document
could lead to the people behind the Dubrovka attack, Glushenkov said.
That document wasn't sensitive and the four classified documents
cited by prosecutors had never been in Trepashkin's possession,
Glushenkov said.

Trepashkin had gone through Shebalin because his work with Kovalyov's
commission cut his access to the FSB, Glushenkov said.

Trepashkin will serve out his sentence in a prison village, said
Nikolai Gorokhov, a member of his defense team.

A term in a prison village is considered the least severe punishment
in the federal prison system and basically amounts to exile.
Trepashkin will live in a separate house and his wife, Tatyana, will
be able to join him, but he will not be allowed to leave until his
term is up.

Trepashkin still faces trial in another case, also believed by his
lawyers to be linked to his theory implicating the FSB. In 2002,
after joining Kovalyov's commission, Trepashkin agreed to represent
sisters Alyona and Tatyana Morozov, whose mother died in the blast on
Ulitsa Guryanova, at the Moscow trial of two men charged with
transporting explosives for the bombing. This January the men were
found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

Trepashkin was going to ask the Moscow court to consider his
evidence, and the court could have agreed to study his findings,
Trepashkin's lawyer said. But police stopped his car outside Moscow
on Oct. 22 last year, a week before the trial started, and claimed to
have found a handgun. Trepashkin was immediately arrested on charges
of illegal arms possession.

Trepashkin says the gun was planted in the car after he was stopped.

The lawyer replacing Trepashkin in the bombing trial didn't file the
motion.

A court in the Moscow region town of Dmitrov is due to start the arms
possession trial on June 2, Trepashkin's lawyer in the case, Yelena
Liptser, said.

Trepashkin faces up to a further three years in jail if found guilty
in the Dmitrov case.

Trepashkin had earlier antagonisms with the FSB that could also be
reasons for his prosecution. He supported FSB agent Alexander
Litvinenko's claim in 1998 that the FSB plotted to kill then-Kremlin
insider Boris Berezovsky.

Also, Trepashkin helped police ambush and arrest a Chechen gang that
planned to rob a Moscow bank in 1995, but the FSB said that he had
overstepped his authority.

Gorokhov said Trepashkin has complained of worsening eyesight,
asthma, heart problems and dizziness since his detention.

Liptser said that, during his first two months of detention,
Trepashkin had complained of being tortured.

He wasn't able to take a shower for weeks, and was held in an
overcrowded cell, she said.

Defense lawyers appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg, claiming that Trepashkin's jailing and torture violated
rights to freedom and humane treatment guaranteed by the European
human rights convention.

Late last year, the Strasbourg court sent a memorandum to the Russian
government expressing concern in the case, and Trepashkin was
transferred to a better cell on Dec. 30.

The court is due to consider Trepashkin's complaints after June 9,
when his lawyers are due to respond to submissions from the Russian
government.


//

KGB really blows!

R

[Admiral_Kolchak]

Chichik you should marry Navodvorskaya so we can make the alliance between Russophobic liberals aka Navodvorskaya (and Moscow Times staff) and Russophobic Chichik supporters of Islamic (or secular nationalist) terrorism to be official.

[Rain]

You defend Kremlin with such passion and yet it would crush you if you ever questioned it. Who is your allegiance to? Your people or your a bunch of crooks in Kremlin? Pathetic...

R

Originally posted by Rain
You defend Kremlin with such passion and yet it would crush you if you ever questioned it. Who is your allegiance to? Your people or your a bunch of crooks in Kremlin? Pathetic...

R

Rain you don't understand. When war is going on, it's not a good time for political struggle within the country. We have a lot of questions to Kremlin, but we'll deal with them later.

[Admiral_Kolchak]

...?

Rain, I'm not a big fan of Putin or Kremlin. I can see his negative and positive sides.

I have never voted for United Russia. I'm affiliated with an opposition party.

Who supposed to be "my people", you accuse me of being against ? Navodvorskaya and co. who don't have support of more than 2-3 % of Russian population or 2/3 of the Russian people who support Putin ??

[Rain]

What about Stepashkin? Is he a traitor because he dared to question KGB? This man is a courageous patriot and I respect him. He will pay for his courage, because KGB will never allow freedom in Russia.

What war are you talking about, Alex? War is over, Russian people have lost. They are again in an authoritarian state, again forced to bow down to the czar.

R

[Admiral_Kolchak]

Rain you can feed Westerners you rubbish about "no freedom in Russia", "authoritarian KGB terror in Russia" etc.

It is laughable to anyone who actually familiar with present-day Russia.

Who is Stepashkin ?

Wasn't it some marginal Yeltsin-era KGBist turn liberal who failed to respond properly to Budenovsk terrorist attack ??

Nobody heard about him in Russia for last 5 years at least.