Nightmare on Kremlin Street: Senators and Lawyers Go Missing in Russia, and Nobody Seems to Notice
Filed under: Russia
Scenario: You wake up this morning and George Bush has announced he has ordered the majority leader of the Senate to fire four Democratic senators who are critical of his Iraq policy. He announces that after they leave office, he's going to put one of them on trial for corruption charges. When a prominent lawyer steps forward to defend that senator in court, Bush announces criminal charges against the lawyer, who is forced to flee the country. After you learn this, what's your view of the state of American civil society?
Guess what. This isn't a hypothetical scenario where Russia is concerned, it's recent history. On June 8th, Andrei Smirnov of the Jamestown Foundation reported that " Russia continues to be rocked by purges of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, where deputies (often called "senators") represent regional governments. On May 14, Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council, dismissed four members of the Council." Mironov is a Kremlin sycophant, who has called for altering the Russian Constitution to allow "President" Putin to remain in power. Two weeks later, a fifth senator was history. Smirnov writes: "On June 2, Senator Levon Chakhmakhchyan was arrested by officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) on charges of bribery. Chakhmakhchyan represents Kalmykia, a region in southern Russia is and vice-president of the Association for Russian-Armenian Business Cooperation."
On July 19th, attorney Robert Amsterdam reported:
Today's news that the highly regarded lawyer Boris Kuznetsov is fleeing Russia after an absurdly baseless order for his arrest under the allegation of "revealing state secrets" represents yet another outrageous example of the state's abuse of the legal system. The arrest order stems from Kuznetsov's defense of Duma member Levon Chakhmakhchyan, who had been illegally wiretapped by the FSB without court permission in an effort to purge him on corruption charges. It seems beyond arguable doubt that there are influential individuals within Russia's intelligence services that believe that once they are unable to defeat an opponent through legal means, that attacking that person's counsel is a perfectly acceptable tactic.
The Washington Post has more details on the criminal probe the Kremlin has opened against Kuznetsov. This isn't the first time the Kremlin has gone after lawyers who tried to represent dissident political figures. Others who have been attacked include Svetlana Bakhmina and Karina Moskalenko, as well as Amsterdam himself.
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