SECRETS OF A SECRET TRIAL

Hearings continue in the Moscow City Court on the case of the bombings of residential buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk. The court has begun questioning the defendants.

The court session has been declared closed; all participants in the process have signed non-disclosure agreements, and lawyers categorically refuse to speak with the press... Nevertheless, we managed to find out what is happening behind the doors of the Moscow City Court.

Participants of the process

• The defendants are Yusuf Krymshamkhalov and Adam Dekkushev.
• The trial is presided over by Judge Marina Komarova.
• On Thursday, December 11, Krymshamkhalov confirmed the testimony he gave at the very beginning: he admits his involvement in the bombing of a residential building in Volgodonsk on September 16, 1999.
• Dekkushev denies his guilt.
• Both defendants categorically refuse to take responsibility for the Moscow terrorist attacks.

Of the 2,060 victims, only six are participating in the trial. The court did not send summonses to the rest. Some arrived because they happened to hear a short message on the radio. Only twelve people were able to familiarize themselves with the case materials after the investigation was completed.

Secrecy

• Journalists are absent from the courtroom.
• Participants in the process are prohibited from making audio and video recordings.
• This is all because some volumes of the case are marked "secret."
• Only five out of 91 volumes were declared as such, but this was enough to completely slam shut the doors of the Moscow City Court.

Meanwhile, all this secrecy is quite surprising. After all, just a few months ago, in June 2003, when the victims were familiarizing themselves with the case, it was not yet marked with a classification. Moreover, the procedural decision regarding this has still not been presented. Someone put the "secret" mark on the volumes with a ballpoint pen. Who exactly and when remains a great mystery...

Both defendants and victims are dissatisfied with the judge

During the last session, Krymshamkhalov's lawyer, Shamil Arifulov, filed a motion to recuse Judge Marina Komarova because, as stated in the motion, the judge behaves biasedly: she asks his client and other participants in the process questions filled with terms completely incomprehensible to a person without a legal education, and seeks to distort the meaning of Krymshamkhalov's answers.

Judge Komarova rejected the motion and, in turn, sent a letter to the Moscow Bar Association, in which she emphasized what she considered to be the lawyer's unacceptable behavior.

The second defendant, Adam Dekkushev, asked the court to contact his relatives and ask them to hire a lawyer. But Judge Komarova refused, and Dekkushev was assigned a free public defender. On Tuesday, December 9, during the court session, Dekkushev stated that throughout the entire trial, the appointed lawyer had visited him only twice.

Not only the defendants but also the victims are dissatisfied with the judge. According to eyewitnesses, the judge allows herself to make incorrect remarks addressed to their lawyers.

Oddities of the investigation

On Thursday, the court and the participants in the process were shown 14 videotapes with recordings confirming Dekkushev's participation in an illegal armed formation, as well as footage from the bombing sites.

• In the film of the inspection of the destroyed house in Volgodonsk, a large crater five meters deep is visible.
• The prosecution believes that this crater is the result of the explosion of a GAZ vehicle loaded with explosives and delivered to the site of the explosion by the defendants.
• However, the victims doubted the investigation's version. Some of them witnessed unknown persons filling sewer manholes in the courtyard of the house with some substance two days before the explosion. The manholes, as it turned out later, were right at the very epicenter. It is possible that the charges were not only in the truck, but, most importantly, in the manholes. In addition, the organizers could have counted on a domestic gas explosion and a fire that would destroy the traces of the crime.
• "Does it matter to us where the explosives were—in the manhole or in the car? This should interest the court, not you," was roughly the judge's reaction...

The victims also told the court about numerous procedural violations committed by the investigation. For example, the medical examination of the victims was carried out hastily, immediately after... [text cuts off]

[Left sidebar]
...[to the Moscow terrorist attacks, and about the trial of those gang members who miraculously survived...)
We were interviewed by GRU officer Senior Lieutenant Alexei Galkin, who was in Chechen captivity and whom the militants forced under torture to state that he blew up houses... Our correspondent visited the homeland of the terrorists Dekkushev (who has already been caught) and Gochiyayev (who is still on the run and writes letters demanding quite large sums of money for information—evidently, it is not he himself who demands it, but those who are holding him).
Gradually it became obvious that around the investi... [text cuts off]

[Right sidebar]
...accused each other of ties and joint business with Chechen militants, in preparation, planning, secret negotiations...
At the same time, none of them—neither the former Russian oligarch nor the current government—wants to clearly answer very significant questions. Berezovsky about his role in all these stories, the government about its own. It looks like an attempt to shift a common great guilt onto each other.
We are forced to remind the warring parties of some materials we have already published and repeat our questions.

...statements made by us and Gochiyayev long ago <...>, it seems that in the near future we will indeed face detention or death <...>.
1. We admit to being accomplices in the terrorist acts that took place in Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999 <...>.
2. We are accomplices in the terrorist attacks at the lowest executive level, and we have nothing to do with the explosions themselves. We were only involved in the transportation of bags, which we believed contained explosives for blowing up administrative [text cuts off]

[Photo captions]
1. Timur Batchayev
2. Achimez Gochiyev
3. Adam Dekkushev
4. Yusuf Krymshamkhalov