News
Publish date: December 19, 1999
Written by: Thomas Nilsen
News
Yet another serious juridical violation was discovered in the court this week, when the experts from the 8th Directorate of Ministry of Defence were cross-examined by Aleksandr Nikitin’s lawyer Jury Schmidt. The experts never wrote the part of the expert evaluation linking the secret decrees to the law on state secrets.
The expert commission, the fourth in the line, presented their conclusion on June 10 this year. When asked about the most interesting part of their juridical evaluations in court this week, Vyacheslav Bakanov, who is one of the experts signing the evaluation, could not answer.
Jury Schmidt asked who connected the decrees with the law on state secret.
“I don’t know,” replied Bakanov. He also confirmed that there were not a single juridical expert or lawyers in the commission. In their conclusion they refers to the expert evaluation of May 1997, where there is 10 pages of juridical analyses.
“This is a proof of the fact that the experts evaluation was re-written in the FSB academy. FSB established the connection between the secret decrees and the law,” says Jury Schmidt.
“Their names are no-where, they are fighting on the invisible stage.”
Since their names are secret, it is impossible for the defence team to cross-examine them. By other words, there is no equality of arms in the court.
Aleksandr Nikitin himself is afraid of the consequences of such expert evaluations, where the experts themselves don’t care about the law, and where FSB participate in the writing of their conclusion on the invisible arena. Nikitin says this is not only a problem affecting himself, but a problem for every Russian citizen.
“How many persons are sitting behind bars for 10 to 15 years due to such experts and the hidden FSB academy participation in commissions using secret laws to claim people guilty of a crime they haven’t done?” asks Nikitin.
“It will be good for me to win this case, because then it will hopefully be less innocent people in jail in Russia,” says Nikitin.
Jury Schmidt adds; “This case (against Aleksandr Nikitin) is not about one person, this case is about the right of us as citizens, people of Russia. But its useless to threaten us, we will never give up.”
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