My Second Arrest
I spent that evening and the night at home. On the morning of January 25th I got up early and hurried to the kiosk for the latest newspapers. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any articles in them about the beginning of my trial. However, I found out later that Fred Hiatt had responded to my case with an article in The Washington Post on January 25, 1994.[300] The journalist informed the American public about the beginning of my closed trial and briefly stated the underlying reasons for it, including my claim that the court was violating Russia’s Constitution, by using unpublished and therefore not legally valid laws, to prosecute me. He also said the case had already awakened concern in the U.S. about the regression of democracy in Russia. He told that according to my lawyer, I had refused to answer questions, after the judge rejected my appeal about the court’s violation of the Constitution of Russia. Hiatt said that Prosecutor Leonid Pankratov surprised many people when he appeared in court in a “military-style three-star uniform” and declined to answer reporters’ questions. When human rights activists who waited for him in the hallway of the courthouse asked him questions, Pankratov, according to the journalist, replied, “Get out of my way. Keep your stupidities to yourself.”
Fred Hiatt also reported that members of the US legislature, including Senator Daniel Moynihan and Congressman John Conyers, had appealed to the Clinton administration seeking to raise a discussion of this case in the bilateral negotiations. He reported that my lawyer Aleksander Asnis had stressed that he was refused access to some relevant documents in the case, though he was shown others for only a short time, without being allowed to take notes. “‘This violates Mr. Mirzayanov’s right of defense and significantly impinges on my ability to defend him,’ Asnis said.”
After breakfast I went for a walk near the house with my younger son Sultan. He was a little sick and didn’t go to kindergarten that day. Asnis called and told me about the court session, which had been brief because I hadn’t appeared. The judge passed a resolution requiring me to be brought to the court by force. Then Asnis and I agreed to meet that evening in the legal advice office where he worked.
However, our meeting never took place. Around 5 P.M., when I was getting ready to go meet with my lawyer, the doorbell rang again. I looked through the peephole and saw two OMON (a SWAT-like police squad) officers armed with automatic weapons. The policemen said that they were from Moscow Police Department 139. I opened the door without further question, because the futility of the situation was clear, and I was prepared for this outcome. They entered the apartment and one of those large men said that I should get ready to proceed to the police department, and showed me the order of the Moscow City Court, which said that I should be brought by force to the Courtroom #30 at 10:30 A.M. on January 26, 1994. I started to get dressed, but then my wife Nuria intervened. She demanded to see the paper and exclaimed, “It says here that he should be brought to the courtroom by 10.30 A.M. on January 26, and not to the police department. What is the date today and what time is it now? This is an obvious violation of the order and willfulness!”
Then I also realized that I would have to pass the night in the police department, in some stinking, filthy and overcrowded cage, without food or drinking water. This is why I immediately exclaimed, “Guys! They will expose you and everybody will ask you how legal your actions were. Besides, I doubt you are the ones you pretend to be. Why don’t you have written instructions from your boss?” A shadow of doubt immediately crept into the ruddy, round and mustachioed face of the OMON officer. He went to the telephone in the kitchen, called his boss, and explained our arguments. He also added that I had demanded written orders from the head of the police department. Probably the boss had also started doubting his actions and backed off. The OMON officer nodded to his cohort, “Let’s go!” I got a reprieve to think about the situation that was developing. I realized that I would be arrested in any case. However, I had promised to go to the press conference and I didn’t have the heart to ruin it. I decided to leave the house immediately and go see my lawyer. Everything would become clear after that. Sergei Mostovshchikov colorfully described this in the January 26, 1994 evening edition of the newspaper Izvestia. According to Sergei, the police came to my apartment at 6.15 A.M. and at 8 A.M. the next day, but failed to find me at home.[301]
So I went to the legal advice office at 6 P.M., but Asnis wasn’t there. His secretary asked me to wait. Finally, my lawyer came back at about 7 P.M. and told me the news. First, the court was literally shocked by my decision. Second, Asnis had met with Aleksei Kazannik, the Attorney General, who had warned my lawyer that a meeting of the Attorney General with the defense counselor during the trial was extraordinary. This is why Alexander Asnis asked me to tell no one about this meeting. I kept my word about it for many years. Asnis said that he saw my case on the Attorney General’s desk. Kazannik was concerned about my case, which he hadn’t yet read. He promised to read it quickly in order to be able to say something specific about it.
When Asnis was leaving Kazannik’s office, he saw Prosecutor Pankratov, who in his opinion wasn’t there by chance. All of that was reassuring, but there was nothing specific there to encourage me. I made up my mind to be firm and consistent with my decision. I had to act in such a way so as not to disgrace myself, but to intensify pressure on the powers that be of this world, in order to have my case thrown out. Asnis asked me to reconsider and think everything over again. However, I had made my decision and I wasn’t going to deviate from my course. We agreed to meet at the press conference, if I hadn’t yet been arrested by that time.
Then I called my daughter Elena from the law office, and said that I would go to her place, which was on Leninski Prospect, and spend the night in her apartment. Just in case, I gave her phone number to my lawyer, so that he could give it to any interested journalists and other people I knew well. Of course I knew that the office telephone was tapped by the Chekists, but I was sure that they would cooperate with the local police only in exceptional cases – for instance in an escape attempt or something like that.
Early the next morning reporters started calling and asking for interviews, and soon some of them showed up at my daughter’s apartment. The American journalist Kathleen Hunt asked how I was feeling before being arrested. I said that it reminded me of the wait before a surgical procedure.
I went to Khlebny Pereulok with my son-in-law, businessman Oleg Orlov and his two sturdy associates. We had to be very vigilant about possible provocations in that situation. I arrived an hour before the appointed time and met Asnis. He told me about his trip earlier that day to the court, which had made a decision regarding my behavior. Sergei Mostovshchikov wrote about it in Izvestia.[302] According to the journalist, it was clear that significant positive changes had taken place. In particular, when the question of my arrest was discussed, and some felt that I should be brought to the courtroom by force, but Prosecutor Pankratov, who had long ago insisted on this measure, abruptly changed his mind and no longer supported this idea. Referring to the Moscow human rights activist, Andrei Mironov, Mostovshchikov wrote that this metamorphosis in the prosecutor was a result of the fact that Attorney General Aleksei Kazannik had been informed about the trial in detail. The journalist thought that information concerning the dubious quality of the compromising material found by the former Ministry of Security, hadn’t made it through to Kazannik, and had been blocked by his subordinates. It is difficult to say, Sergei Mostovshchikov ironically continued, how one could be ignorant of a case which was reported in all the newspapers of the country. Still, it was so and even the court was in a state of confusion. The next court session was scheduled only for February 3rd, providing support for Mostovshchikov’s theory. I must add that Nikolai Sazonov, as an experienced judge, reckoned the defendant would become “prudent” after he had spent more than a week in jail.
300
Fred Hiatt, “Russian Court Opens Unprecedented Secrets Trial”,
302
Sergei Mostovshchikov, “Moscow City Court Decided to use the Force of Police Department 139 Against Vil Mirzayanov”,