Суд мести

Yet the judge could have put this testimony from Smirnov into the transcript, even after the date. She did not: the Supreme Court is unlikely to notice such a trifling issue.

It was not always thus in Russia. Time was when the top judicial body wouldn't allow such outrages. Only in an unfree society can a politically motivated trial leave the victim with no hope.

During the second half of the 19th century, after Alexander II's court reforms, there were some profoundly political trials of People's Will activists who espoused terror. And they did not always end as the Romanovs wished. The guarantees of independence that the Tsar gave to the judiciary made it possible for his killers to fight for their lives in court and even hope for acquittal.

Nonetheless, the Tsarist regime stuck to its guns and Grand Princes died, sometimes because of the courts' independence. The independent court became a potent weapon in the public's hands. And this at a time when the hunt was on for the "Tsar's satraps" and the most august family in the land. It culminated in the emperor's own murder.

Compare that to the present-day regime, its machinery of repression and tame courts. In January 2004, when the investigation into the Pichugin case was drawing to a close, one of the employees of Nevzlin's office was summoned by investigating officer Burtovoy for questioning. She was asked how often she had met Pichugin and if she could describe him.

"I can't," she replied. "I haven't seen him much and would have difficulty saying what he looks like. But I'd recognise him if I bumped into him out and about." Burtovoy turned to face the window and tapped his pen on the desk: "You won't see Pichugin out and about again."

In some respects, society under the Tsars was rather freer than ours.

And so, the verdict was given. Aleksey Pichugin was sentenced to 20 years in the camps as a punishment for the stubbornness and strength of character with which he had resisted an illegitimate investigation and trial. That the case was made to measure was so obvious to any thinking person that the main job for state TV was to avoid mentioning any of the details of the trial in its reports.

Bear in mind that all TV in Russia is state TV. Reporting details of the trial would have led to some uncomfortable questions, and what was needed was to urgently educate the public about the justice of the sentence and to use "Pichugin the killer" to expose all of Yukos. With few exceptions, journalists set about doing just that. The RTR channel and NTV carried a parade of lies unworthy even of the word propaganda.

State TV ran several programmes and reports featuring witnesses from this closed trial. Naturally, they incriminated Pichugin. Even Korovnikov was interviewed, speaking almost as an expert as he carefully tried to explain how the oligarchs and their companies earned their money.

He sat at a table with a reporter, wearing a suit and a polo-neck sweater and looking rather smarter than he and his associates had when they were off-camera. Incidentally, he was also presented at the trial in a dark blue suit, dark polo-neck and smart shoes although, as a convicted criminal, he had attended the first witness confrontation in prison garb and handcuffs.

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