Judge Rejects Defense Motions in Trial of Twelve

By Sergey Chernov

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: September 5, 2012 (Issue # 1725)

KRISTINA FATINA / SPT A woman holds a sign urging people to join the March of Millions planned for Sept. 15 during Friday’s rally.

The judge rejected the defense’s motion to exclude video surveillance tapes as inadmissible evidence Tuesday in St. Petersburg’s notorious Trial of 12, in which 12 activists of the opposition party The Other Russia face prison terms for alleged extremist activities.

The prosecution says the tapes — presented on 27 DVD disks — were secretly made by counter-extremism Center E police between July 1, 2009 and Jan. 1, 2010 in an apartment where the local branch of the party held its weekly meetings.

Although repeatedly denied registration with the state, The Other Russia has not been banned and acts legally.

The prosecution sees the tapes — which were watched in the Vyborgsky District Court from June through August (excluding July, when the judge was on holiday) — as one of the key pieces of evidence that activists had in fact re-launched the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) in 2009.

The activists, who had belonged to the NBP, which was active from 1994 until 2007 when it was banned as extremist by the Moscow City Court after a series of peaceful anti-Kremlin protests, were heard on the tapes discussing political and social issues and opposition activities. No calls for violence or anything that could be qualified as extremist were heard.

In the prosecution’s view, occasional references to the banned NBP, accounts of meetings with author Eduard Limonov, who founded both the NBP and The Other Russia, announcements urging activists to pay membership fees and a highly blurred image of a flag prove that the group on the tapes was in fact acting as the NBP.

The defense denounced the tapes from the start as inadmissible evidence, having been obtained as the result of a police provocation. The defense argues that the apartment on Lesnoi Prospekt was rented by Center E and offered to the activists for meetings via a police informer.

Judge Sergei Yakovlev ruled to allow the prosecutor to present the tapes.

Later, the defense wanted them excluded on the grounds that the dates in the file information in many video files differed from those listed in the criminal case, making it unclear if they were made within the six months allowed by the court for video surveillance.

A police technical specialist testified that the dates in video file information may differ from the actual dates because of the video equipment’s settings or technical errors, and the real date could only be established if the equipment was examined soon after the recording was made.

The prosecution refused to say what kind of equipment was used on the grounds of secrecy.

Secrecy was also the grounds on which Judge Sergei Yakovlev declined Tuesday defense lawyer Anastasia Yekimovskaya’s motion to see Center E’s materials relating to the surveillance, arguing that they could throw light on actual circumstances of when the videos were made.

“The case is flawed, and when we try to examine the evidence, we run into a wall of secrecy,” lawyer Ivan Bulgakov said.

In an earlier hearing on Aug. 21, Polina Likhachyova, the investigator who had written descriptions of what was shown and heard in the tapes, was interrogated by the defense.

When asked how Likhachyova could identify the flag on the black-and-white video as the banned red flag of the NBP, she admitted she did not know what the NBP flag looked like.

Likhachyova said she had watched the tapes with Center E officer Ivan Melnikov, who identified the people on the video and explained what exactly was shown on the tapes to her.

Melnikov, who was interrogated on Aug. 28, also found it difficult to describe the banned flag. “Whatever flag you have, it’s an NBP flag!” he said, addressing the defendants.

“The whole case is sheer police provocation and secrets,” defense lawyer Olga Tseitlina said outside the court Tuesday.

Local Yabloko liberal party deputy Maxim Reznik will testify as a defense witness in the next hearing, due Friday.

Meanwhile, four activists of The Other Russia protested Friday against an eight-year sentence given to Taisia Osipova, a party activist in Smolensk, on debatable drug dealing charges. The protest was part of the regular Strategy 31 rally in defense of the right of assembly.

The activists were surrounded by about 20 OMON riot police officers and taken to a police bus seconds after two of them unveiled a banner reading “Free Taisia Osipova” while the other two sat in front of them and started to chant.

In total, 14 people, half of whom were not participating in the rally, were arrested, but were unexpectedly released three hours later.