Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s defence team is submitting complaints against two Chita judges to higher courts and to professional bodies

On 1 August 2008 the Ingodinsky district court in Chita completed its examination of a complaint made as far back as 31 December 2007 by the defence team of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky concerning the unlawful actions (inaction) and rulings of the investigators. We may recall that this complaint was being examined for the second time, after the appeal court annulled the lower court’s decree, refusing to uphold the complaint.

This time Judge V.L. Kaminsky realised that he could not wholly dismiss the arguments of the defence and admitted that certain actions and decisions of the investigation, those of the most obvious and formal character, were indeed unlawful. He did not deny another group of violations that were the subject of defence objections but found a means to avoid a ruling on substance, by invoking a plausible (but in reality invented) pretext to do so. For instance, concerning certain violations he indicated in his ruling that they could not now be eliminated ... and, therefore, there was no reason to adjudge them unlawful.

On the very same day, 1 August 2008, the chairman of the Ingodinsky district court, Judge V.V. Tikhonov, demonstrated a yet more cynical and outrageous contempt for the law. He had received a new and analogous complaint by the defence against the latest serious of unlawful acts by the investigators which, this time, was submitted jointly by Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev and their defence attorneys. Without even convening a judicial hearing, Judge Tikhonov simply returned the complaint to its authors, with a written note that, speaking on behalf of the court, he did not see “a subject for judicial examination” in the arguments presented.

The appeals submitted against the two above-mentioned “acts of justice” on 11 August 2008 do not require particular commentary. Except, perhaps, for one circumstance. A court refusing justice — is this not the legal nihilism against which the new Russian president has declared all-out war?!

The complaint against the unlawful ruling issued by Judge Tikhonov is published in full; the complaint against the ruling of Judge Kaminsky is given in excerpts since, in essence, the two coincide to a significant extent. Once the defence has been able to familiarise itself with the records of the court hearing (as of today these have not yet been received), moreover, it will then submit an additional complaint against the ruling issued by Judge Kaminsky and the actions of Judge Tikhonov, qualifying both as professionally unacceptable. The defence will also lodge a complaint with the credentials commission of the collegium of judges.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s defence team, 11 August 2008