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gazeta.ru
December 17, 2001
Pasko Defence Confident of Full Acquittal
By Lera Arsenina
Grigory Pasko’s defence lawyer Ivan Pavlov is convinced that in a week his client will be fully acquitted. As strange as it may seem, the naval prosecutor in Pasko’s case Alexander Kondakov may well have helped the defence’s case.
Grigory Pasko, a former naval officer and later a reporter for the Pacific Ocean Fleet’s publication Boevaya Vakhta (Battle Watch), was arrested by the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) Pacific Ocean Fleet department in November 1997 and was charged with high treason for supplying classified materials to the Japanese media.
The FSB alleged that Grigory Pasko passed documents containing classified information to the Japanese newspaper Asahi and to Japan’s NHK television network. Pasko denied the charges and claimed he was being persecuted because of to his environmental activities: In several articles Pasko exposed the Russian navy’s practice of illegally dumping nuclear waste off the coast of the Primorye Region.
Pasko spent almost two years in custody and then in July 1999 the Pacific Fleet court acquitted him of espionage charges but instead convicted him of ‘abuse of office’ and sentenced him to 3 years in prison. However, after the sentence was read out the journalist was immediately released under an amnesty act.
Grigory Pasko’s defence then filed an appeal to a higher court, pressing for a full acquittal. At the same time the Pacific Ocean Fleet prosecutor’s office lodged a complaint to the Supreme Court of Russia, demanding that Pasko be retried on espionage charges.
In November 2000 the board of military judges of the Supreme Court ruled that Pasko’s case had not been fully and thoroughly investigated and thus annulled the three-year sentence and sent the case back to the Pacific Ocean Fleet court.
The first court hearings of Pasko’s retrial on espionage charges were initially scheduled for June 4, 2001 but were postponed until June 20 at the request of the military prosecutor. The hearings began on July 11 and the trial has continued since.
On Monday, December 17, Grigory Pasko’s defence attorneys delivered their final statement to the Pacific Ocean Fleet military court.
Pasko’s chief defence lawyer Ivan Pavlov gave a 2 hour speech explaining why he considers his client is innocent and called for his full acquitted.
First and foremost, Pavlov drew attention to the fact that the indictment act was based on a Defence Ministry decree on state secrets, which was annulled by the Supreme Court of Russia in September this year; therefore the indictment has no legal base, the lawyer claims.
Pasko’s indictment is based on the Defence Ministry’s decree No.055 ‘On State Secrets’ which dictates what military data constitutes classified information. However, that decree was annulled by the Supreme Court on September 12 this year upon the request of an expert from the Norwegian environmental organisation Bellona, Alexander Nikitin.
Nikitin, a former navy officer with Russia’s Northern Fleet, was also charged with high treason but was acquitted due to a lack of evidence.
But Pasko’s lawyer holds that even if the Defence Ministry decree No. 055 had not been annulled, it could not prove Pasko’s guilt for Pavlov claims the documents that Pasko handed to the Japanese media did not contain any classified information.
Pavlov also claims the prosecutors have not presented a shred of evidence proving that Pasko actually met with the Japanese media and handed them the documents. The prosecutor Alexander Kondakov has reportedly not specified where, how and to whom Pasko presented the supposedly classified documents. Thus Pasko’s defence insists that the charges lack clarity.
Furthermore, the defence claims that much of the evidence presented by the prosecution was gathered in breech of procedural regulations and is therefore inadmissible evidence.
Pavlov is confident that on December 24 Pasko will be acquitted.
Pasko’s lawyer Pavlov told Gazeta.Ru that throughout the litigation the defence has done everything possible to prove Pasko’s innocence.
The naval prosecutor Alexander Kondakov has partly helped the defence’s case by dropping the charge of ‘passing-classified-data’, thus reducing the charge to ‘gathering classified information with the aim of passing it over to an unauthorised party. Nevertheless the prosecution is still demanding that Pasko be jailed for 9 years.
Pasko is due to make his final statement to the court on Tuesday December 18th.
Pasko’s trial has attracted public attention not only in Russia, but also abroad. The international human rights watchdog Amnesty International has called Pasko “a prisoner of conscience”.
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