Only provocateurs, sadists and rapists should be tried. But all of them in this case are representatives of the state

Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 24.07.2020

The New Greatness case is fabricated. Neither investigators nor prosecutors conceal this. Four law enforcement officers who directly fabricated this criminal case are witnesses in the case: they themselves created an extremist organisation, wrote its charter, they themselves attracted young people into it, instructed the recruited participants and provoked them to make statements they were later charged with.

All the accused are still young people. At the time of the arrest, Anna Pavlikova was 17 years old, Maria Dubovik – 19, Vyacheslav Kryukov – 20, Sergei Gavrilov and Ruslan Kostylenkov – 25, Dmitry Poletayev – 29, Rustam Rustamov – 30, Pavel Rebrovsky – 31, Petr Karamzin – 32, Maxim Roshchin – 39. Some of those arrested under torture and threats gave confessions and made a deal with the investigation, someone managed to escape from house arrest. The girls who were in terrible conditions in the pre-trial detention centre were diagnosed with serious illnesses. Young people were tortured, at least one of those arrested was raped by law enforcement officers. All these are well-known methods of the Stalinist-Bolshevik terror, the tools of the NKVD-KGB punishers. This is the old ignominy, but not the “new greatness.”

The state prosecution requested terms of up to 7.5 years in prison for the defendants in the case. But even the Public Prosecutor’s Office considered it unnecessary to prosecute them under the article on “participation in an extremist community,” “organising an extremist community” is enough of prosecutors. This only confirms the fact that there was no “extremist community”, but there was only a provocation carried out for career purposes by the security forces.

True, it is extremely difficult to achieve legality and justice in a state where the Constitution and laws are rewritten overnight for the sake of nullification [of presidential terms] and life-long irremovability of power; where criminal cases are fabricated – both on request for settling accounts and on the basis of local initiative for better accountability; where torture has become a familiar instrument of investigation; where the authorities return to the Bolshevik model of governing the country, based on lies and violence.

But even in this situation, it is obvious that the deliberate provocation of citizens by law enforcement agencies in the direction of extremist activity is illegal and criminal. The New Greatness case must be terminated, the defendants must be fully acquitted and released, and all government officials involved in the disgusting provocation must be held to the strictest responsibility.

In August 2018, I personally turned to the Public Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation with the same demands on the New Greatness case. The appeal, in fact, remained without answer. But this does not mean that one should be silent. Dozens of millions of Russian citizens will certainly learn about provocations, falsifications and torture – and will demand an answer.

Source

Grigory Yavlinsky

is Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, Vice President of Liberal International. Doctor of Economics, Professor at Higher School of Economics.