Mortally ill Vasily Aleksanyan is to remain in prison

On Tuesday three judges of the Russian Federation’s Supreme Court listened to the arguments of Vasily Aleksanyan’s defence attorneys, heard a speech by Aleksanyan himself (by video-link from prison) and a 30-second contribution from the prosecutor. After retiring to deliberate they emerged with a ruling based on information that had not been made available during the hearing and was unknown even to the defence team.

The deputy Prosecutor General had already confirmed the charges against Mr Aleksanyan, the judges said, and the criminal case had been sent to the court for consideration. This gave them grounds to turn down the appeal of the defence team against the latest extension of Vasily Aleksanyan’s detention in custody. His lawyers Yelena Lvova and Gevorg Dangyan described the court ruling as unlawful, unfounded and unconstitutional. They further expressed incomprehension at the qualities of the deliberations chamber that was capable of generating such results.

Leaning heavily on a table, Vasily Aleksanyan also spoke to the court. His account described treatment that might more readily be expected in a book about torture. Coughing, he told his audience how his health and life were being systematically taken away in prison. (There follows a transcription of most of Aleksanyan’s words this Tuesday in the Supreme Court.)

Vasily Aleksanyan’s speech before the RF Supreme Court

I would like to describe a few more very important aspects ...

[begins coughing after his first words]

Please excuse my cough. I would like you to hear from my lips certain things that are crucially important in order to understand what is happening. [...]

I would like to put an end to insinuations that I have refused to accept treatment. I wish that anyone who makes such assertions could inhabit my body for ten minutes so that he could experience these hellish torments. Only a witless person could say such a thing. Let pain drive him up the wall and no one help with any medicaments, then let him have the courage to look me in the eye.

On 22 November 2006 the prosecutor’s office realised that they had problems with me. [By then the forensic medical service, after an unprecedented, three-month wait, finally concluded its diagnosis of Aleksanyan, who was HIV-positive.] [...]

I am prepared to answer for every word I’m about to say.

At that point the preliminary investigation into my case was totally under the control of the prosecutor’s office. And what happens? On 28 December 2006 I was taken, on pretext of acquainting me with certain materials, to the building of the Prosecutor General's office. I try to find out, why am I still being held in prison, why I am dying there. Investigator Salavat Karimov (who was then preparing new, absurd accusations against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev) offers to do a deal with me. My lawyers are here. They were present when I was taken to Karimov and left alone with him.

He told me: those in charge of the Prosecutor General's office understand that you must have treatment, even abroad, perhaps, not in Russia, and that your condition is severe. We need your testimony because we cannot confirm the accusations we are bringing against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. If you give testimony that suits the investigators, then we shall let you go. He then proposed how we would organise this deal. You write a formal request that I have you transferred to [police headquarters at] 38 Petrovka Street and there the investigators will work with you for a week or two. When we have received those depositions that suit our bosses then we shall make an exchange, as he put it, signature for signature, i.e. I shall put on the table a decree changing the measure of restraint against you and you will sign the official record of your deposition. He used various ways to convince me to do this, showing me the title page of depositions that had supposedly been provided by other people who had agreed to help the investigators.

However, I cannot commit perjury or implicate innocent people. So I refused. And no matter how awful my condition is today because I did not do so, I cannot buy back my life in such a way now, so help me God.

[The court permits Aleksanyan to speak, seated.]

After this the conditions in which I was held worsened drastically. The pre-trial detention centre where I was being held (SIZO 99/1), is classed a special prison, you’d have difficulty finding the place. No more than one hundred people are detained there, even when it is full. I was put in frightful cells, that recall the time of Stalin’s jailers Beria and Abakumov! They are damp and filthy. And these people know that my immune system is destroyed. The fascists!

[Aleksanyan’s voice trembles. A judge attempts to interrupt but he continues.]

I ask you to hear me out. Excuse me, your Honour, but I am also not appearing for the first time before the Supreme Court. But how much can one man stand?! Each time I am diagnosed with another serious disease ... In April 2007 investigator Khatypov — I name him because some day these people will be called to account — said to my defence attorney, Yelena Lvova, who is present here: If he admits his guilt and agrees to our conditions and way of doing things, then we’ll let him go. All this time, moreover, they did not just fail to provide any treatment: they did not want to take me for further tests. That was torture. Plain, legalised torture. They say I refused treatment. That’s crazy! You are now watching me by video link, evidently in black and white. If you could see me in the court room you would be horrified. My face is marked by the traces of those diseases I now carry within me.

They wanted to use me to set a precedent, to create judicial prejudice. I am lawyer myself, I understand Article 90 [“Prejudice”] of the Criminal Procedural Code. They would not then need to prove anything else against Khodorkovsky, Lebedev and other directors [in the Yukos affair].

In June 2007 my condition began to get much worse. Every day for three weeks I begged them to let me see a doctor. Instead they even limited the pain-killers I was allowed to receive. You understand what they were up to! The devil is in the details. I was tortured with cold and hunger. For a year I slept in my clothes. It was only 2 or 3 degrees Centigrade in my cell. Water ran down the walls. Mould. This, in the 21st century. Do you know what you are doing! Well, not you but the authorities. [...]

They reduced me to a condition when even the doctors were horrified by what they saw. You know the meaning of the indicators that Yelena Lvova made public [Aleksanyan’s attorney told the court that his immune status was 4% and more than a million HIV RNA copies per milliliter (ml) of blood]. That would be enough to kill two people: when the level exceeds 100,000 doctors begin to despair. In my case their instruments couldn’t measure it. [...]

During that period I was diagnosed as having three other serious diseases, instead of moving me to the Moscow City AIDS Centre. What was the problem? The problem was that on 15 November my detention in custody was extended until 2 March 2008. On 27 November investigator Tatyana Rusanova, a close colleague of Karimov (who is now adviser to the Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, if anyone doesn’t know), came to see me and made the same proposal. She did so, this time, in the presence of one of my defence lawyers who is at this hearing: give us the testimony and we shall have another series of tests and release you from detention. They are criminals!

When the European Court of Human Rights issued its Interim Measure, requiring that I be transferred to a hospital without delay investigator Rusanova, who was going away on business, told investigator Yegorov to let my lawyer know that the offer still stood. They could not give a damn about the European Court. They needed to force me into giving testimony because they wanted to put on a show trial [...] But I will not commit perjury. I won’t lie. I shall not incriminate innocent people. I don’t know of any crimes committed by Yukos and its staff. It’s all a pack of lies.

No one intended to give me medical treatment. I never refused treatment, I don’t want to commit suicide. [...] I have a little child, born in 2002, who needs looking after. Why would I not want to get well? Why don’t I want to live?! Lies. I ask that you forget once and for all about this insinuation and never use it again. How many times I’ve tried to get medical treatment. [...] I applied for a criminal case to be initiated against Doctor Yelena Molokova [Aleksanyan’s doctor on the infectious diseases ward of the prison hospital] but she has been off work, sick for a whole month. She is the only doctor treating infectious diseases in the prison where I’m being held. She’s absent and we don’t get any treatment there.

Judge: Aleksanyan, come to the point.

Aleksanyan: There were no grounds for extending my detention in custody. Moreover, if Judge Fomin had studied the real circumstances at the moment when the investigator made this petition, he should have turned it down [Fomin of the Moscow City Court extended Aleksanyan’s detention in custody on 15 November 2007]. In the ruling there is not a single lawful reason for holding me in prison. I was arrested on totally falsified accusations, involving the particularly serious Article 174.1. This was added to the Criminal Code on 1 January 2002 while the events described occurred in 1998-9. That also requires investigation. Evidently, the European Court will consider that issue. I was arrested so as remove me as the acting president of Yukos. [...]

Judge: Say what decision you expect from the Supreme Court?

Aleksanyan: I expect you to reach a just and humane decision. I consider that there are no lawful grounds for keeping me in detention in the present conditions and in my present state of health. The investigation has been completed, we have signed all the depositions. There just remains, it seems, a desire to finish me off behind bars.

I think that the Supreme Court must make up its mind, reverse Judge Fomin’s decree and release me from custody. That’s the ruling I expect. I consider the extension to be unlawful. I ask the Supreme Court to show that there is justice in Russia and that Russian citizens do not need to go and die on the steps of the European Court of Human Rights in order to attain justice, that it can be found here, in Moscow, in your court room. Show that’s true. How long can we pave the country with bones?

My trial has not yet begun, by the way. Preliminary investigation? For two years you’ve kept a very sick man in prison.