“The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

In the context of Henry VI, Part II (Act IV, Scene 2), those lines, when spoken by the villainous Dick the Butcher, make sense . . . in an ironically humorous way. But when applied literally — and most especially in today’s Russia — well . . . I’ll let you judge.

Alexei Navalny — the Russian dissident who for years was an ever-present thorn in Vladimir Putin’s side — died in prison in February of this year under, shall we say, questionable circumstances. But four months prior to his death, in October 2023, three of his attorneys — Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser — were arrested and accused of acting as intermediaries between Navalny and his so-called “extremist group” (the Kremlin’s description for his Anti-Corruption Foundation).

In February — the same month in which Navalny drew his last breath — two more of his lawyers were placed on a wanted list: Olga Mikhailova, who had earlier been charged in absentia with extremism after fleeing the country, and Aleksandr Fedulov, also now living outside of Russia.

The three imprisoned lawyers have in turn retained attorneys to represent them. Those attorneys have petitioned the Supreme Court to transfer the case out of a court in the western Vladimir region of Russia on the grounds that it may not be objective or impartial. They argued that the bulk of the prosecution’s evidence had been obtained in a raid that was in fact illegal, and had been ordered by a superior court in the same (Vladimir) region, which they considered to be a conflict of interest.

The petition also charged that the Vladimir courts had “pressured Navalny’s lawyers to disclose confidential communications with him before the politician’s February death in a remote Arctic prison.” [Associated Press, August 20, 2024.]

The Russian Supreme Court yesterday refused to release the three lawyers or to transfer their case to a different court, thereby effectively also denying any conflict of interest. The prisoners will now await trial at some unspecified date on charges of extremism. Conviction is a foregone conclusion; the only questions are how long a sentence each will receive, and where it will be served.

*. *. *

Yesterday, I commented on the case of U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Gordon Black, one of the remaining American hostages in Russia’s prison camps, whose appeal has just been denied despite the questionable evidence on which his conviction had been based. At that time, I wrote:

“I can’t even imagine how frustrating it must be, trying to practice law in Putin’s Russia.”

Considering the plight of Attorneys Kobzev, Sergunin and Liptser, it is painfully obvious that I grossly understated the situation. Defending a client against criminal charges not only carries with it a responsibility for the defendant’s life, but — in Russia — for the attorney’s own life as well.

The fact is, there is no justice in Vladimir Putin’s Russia . . . and there never will be, as long as he remains in charge. It is that simple.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
8/21/24