Letter from lawyer Andrei Onishchenko to Tatyana Morozova
Dear Tatyana Morozova.

The trial is over, and the verdict will be announced on January 12th. Without a doubt, both defendants will be found guilty. Moreover, they will even be found guilty of the apartment building bombings in Moscow, which follows logically from the judicial system's goal of "finding a convenient culprit." However, I can confidently state that the defendants did not participate in the apartment building bombings in Moscow; they were never even in Moscow. Frankly, I was unable to fully understand the case due to the court's opposition.

Advertising:
Politzeki.ru

I joined the trial as your representative on the second day of the hearing. Accordingly, I submitted a written motion to the judge to postpone the hearing, requesting a reasonable period of time to review the case file—five and then three days—which was denied. Therefore, I sat through the first two weeks of the trial completely unprepared, unable to fully represent your interests or ask questions of the defendants in a timely manner.

It was during the first two weeks that the key witnesses in the case were questioned. The judge ignored your motions sent to her by telegraph, even though having a representative in the case does not deprive you of the right to independently submit motions. She rejected absolutely all my motions, including the motion to summon Trepashkin to the court hearing for questioning as a witness, which you instructed me to do.

Due to the fact that I have been required to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding state secrets, I am afraid to provide you with a full report of the court hearing due to my reluctance to accompany Trepashkin to the pre-trial detention center. Although, strangely enough, I did not see a single classified document during the trial, I believe that the appearance of secrecy was created to motivate a closed trial, which was needed solely for a "one-sided" examination of the case.

In this case, the "Chechen connection" does not hold up to any criticism: among the people who, according to the investigation, were involved in the explosions, there is not a single Chechen, only a few Karachays (deceased) and "a number of unidentified individuals."

The organizers are not in the dock. The question of who organized these explosions and who these "unidentified individuals" are will remain unanswered for a long time. Moreover, these questions were raised in court and dismissed on the grounds that they were beyond the scope of this criminal case—the court, they say, is examining the guilt of specific defendants in these explosions, not the entire case concerning the explosions. I must say, this is a very convenient position for the court, whose goal is to conceal the truth. They say the remaining terrorists were killed during the anti-terrorist operation, only two were apprehended, they were brought to trial, and the court found them guilty of the apartment building bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk. And the fact that these individuals could not have been in two different cities simultaneously is quietly omitted.

In my opinion, these two defendants could indeed have been involved in the explosion of the apartment building in Volgodonsk, but only as rank-and-file perpetrators. As I've already explained, there were no organizers.

An interesting detail: after the Moscow bombings, the defendants were detained in Volgodonsk. They were detained on the basis of a warrant and taken to the local police station. The car containing the explosives was inspected by police. However, a few hours later, the defendants were unexpectedly released, and the following night, a building in Volgodonsk was blown up. Who exactly gave the order to release them is unknown, but I suspect it wasn't Shamil Basayev. It's also unknown whether anything was found in the car due to the lack of a search report. However, it's unclear how 3-4 tons of explosives could have gone unnoticed in a "Buchok" truck with a carrying capacity of only 3 tons.

The incompleteness of the trial is simply appalling. The case file consists entirely of photocopies; it doesn't contain all the materials collected by the investigators. For example, I know for a fact that Blumenfeld (the entrepreneur who rented out the premises in the building on Guryanova Street. A sensational interview with him was published in Moskovskiye Novosti – Ed.) was held in custody for some time, but the case file contains no documents regarding his arrest, meaning the investigators only selectively presented some of the materials they obtained at their own discretion.

The defendants behaved rather inappropriately during the trial. They readily answered questions from the prosecutor, the judge, and their defense attorneys, but avoided answering the victims' questions. They pointedly refused to answer my questions about the possible involvement of security services in the bombings, as had been previously mentioned in the press. One of them even said that "human rights organizations are worse than war." Therefore, I fear that both defendants were at the very least psychologically manipulated and behaved in court as needed for the investigation. Perhaps they were promised something, since despite their sentences, they could be pardoned by the President of the Russian Federation.

Despite the end of the trial in this case, many questions remain, and no one is ready to answer these questions.

Sincerely,
lawyer Onishchenko A.D.
01/11/2004