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But the Moscow City Court, in breach of article 123 of the Russian Federation Constitution and of article 6 of the European Human Rights Convention, held the trial behind closed doors even though Russia, as a member of the Council of Europe, is a signatory to the Convention and is obliged to comply with it.

And then, immediately after the verdict and sentencing, strange things began to happen: prosecutor Kashayev, who had been involved in the trial, started giving extensive interviews on the circumstances of the case and Pichugin's role in criminal activity.

As if by command, all TV channels began to describe in detail how Pichugin had been ordered by the Yukos management to commit murders. The Honest Confession programme showed a crime report called The Yukos Squad. Similar items were broadcast in the programmes Moment of Truth and Honest Detective. All TV channels sought to prove that Pichugin had been lawfully and legitimately convicted.

The state-controlled mass media turned the persecution of Pichugin, and also of the main Yukos shareholders, into a political show, presenting it as a triumph of judicial process and justice. Public opinion was heavily massaged. Someone needed the top Yukos management to be associated in the public mind not only with tax evasion but also murder.

This was bound to raise a huge number of questions in Russia and beyond about this supposedly secret case:

- why had the court held Pichugin's trial behind closed doors, thereby depriving him of the right to a transparent and open hearing and the public and the media of the right to accurate and objective information directly from the courtroom?

- why was the veil of secrecy lifted as soon as the verdict was handed down?

- and why were only state-controlled media and selected journalists allowed to report on the trial?

Russia and the rest of the world would have waited a long time for the answers. But strangely enough, the Procuracy General helped provide them by incautiously placing on its website Kashayev's address for the prosecution, which contained no mention or even hint of classified documents.

This confirms the defence's conclusion that no classified documents figured in the judicial inquiry process, and that therefore the court had no legal grounds whatsoever to hold its deliberations in secret.

So there is every reason to believe that the Procuracy General declared the case classified solely so that the court would sit in camera. So that the public would not see for themselves the weak and dubious nature of the prosecution's evidence - which the procuracy is now trying to bolster in various commentaries and radio and television programmes.

Analysis of prosecutor Kashayev's address shows that Pichugin was charged on the basis of assumption and circumstantial and inadmissible evidence, and also of uncorroborated, contradictory and inconsistent testimony from persons convicted of serious and grave crimes.

The actual wording of the charges gives rise to questions about the substance. But for me, the most dismal impression came from the evidence that, in the prosecution's opinion, confirmed the criminal complicity of Pichugin and senior figures in Yukos unidentified by the investigation.

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