Lebedev’s complaint returns from Siberia to the capital.

In late February a complaint by Platon Lebedev’s defence team was sent back from Moscow to Chita. Now, however, the Ingodinsky district court in the east Siberian city has decided that the Basmanny court judge in Moscow had no legal grounds for returning the complaint to Chita. Accordingly it will now be appealed before the Moscow City Court where a further complaint will be lodged against the decree that it should be heard in Siberia.

It was on 21 February this year that Sergei Kupreichenko, Lebedev’s lawyer, submitted a complaint to the Basmanny district court in Moscow about the lack of action taken by the investigators on the case against his client. Kupreichenko was unable to attend the hearing, fixed for 26 February, since he was then working with Lebedev in Chita. Informed of the hearing on the day it was due to happen, Kupreichenko sent a request that it be deferred. However, Judge N.N. Dudar decided it was possible to hold the hearing in the absence of the plaintiff’s lawyers and ruled that the complaint fell under the jurisdiction of the Ingodinsky district court in Chita. Kupreichenko says that Dudar’s decree was “quite unlawful and unfounded” since she took the decision in the absence of a lawyer who had objected to a discussion of the issue without his participation.

On returning from Chita, Kupreichenko learned that it would be complicated to file a complaint against Judge Dudar’s ruling. Contrary to the law on such matters, she had already returned the complaint to Chita on 27 February, i.e. without waiting for the procedural deadline that assures the defence the right to appeal the decision. “By her actions federal Judge Dudar has flagrantly violated the right of Mr Lebedev to be defended and restricted his access to justice,” wrote Kupreichenko is his complaint about the presiding judge of the Basmanny district court. In the clerk’s office at the courthouse the lawyer was advised not to complain about Judge Dudar’s ruling: otherwise, he was told, examination of the original complaint about the inaction of the investigators might “be put off until summer”.

The defence team are quite convinced, however, that the return of the case to a different jurisdiction was based on a ruling that “blatantly infringed the requirements of the Criminal-Procedural law” on such matters. They therefore submitted a formal complaint. However, the clerk’s advice was not entirely wrong. Hold-ups in the transfer of documents between Moscow and Chita may indeed delay an examination of the complaint for months yet.