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Moscow Times
May 20, 2004
FSB Critic Trepashkin Jailed for 4 Years
By Anatoly Medetsky
Staff Writer
Lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin was sentenced to four years in prison Wednesday in a move that he and human rights advocates decried as retribution for his investigation into allegations linking the Federal Security Service to the 1999 apartment bombings.
After a seven-month closed-door trial, the Moscow Military District Court found Trepashkin, a former FSB lieutenant colonel, guilty of divulging state secrets and illegal possession of ammunition.
The charges are based on a search that turned up 26 cartridges in Trepashkin's apartment in January 2002 and a report from a former FSB agent that Trepashkin showed him classified documents he had kept from his time in the service.
Trepashkin, wearing a blue tracksuit emblazoned with the word "Columbia," showed no visible reaction from the defendant's cage as the verdict was read out.
Trepashkin's lawyer, Valery Glushenkov, said he would appeal the verdict and seek a full acquittal.
Prosecutors had demanded Trepashkin be jailed for five years.
Speaking in a quiet, subdued voice from the defendant's cage to reporters, who were allowed into the court a few minutes before the judge pronounced sentence, Trepashkin said: "I don't expect anything good. The case was filed on someone's orders and doesn't stand up to criticism from a legal point of view."
"It's linked to my work with Sergei Kovalyov's commission," he said, referring to the Terror 1999 commission investigating the 1999 apartment bombings on Ulitsa Guryanova and Kashirskoye Shosse and the 2002 Dubrovka theater hostage-taking, headed by the then-State Duma Deputy and human rights advocate. "If I hadn't gotten involved, there wouldn't have been any case [against me]."
With his security service background, Trepashkin was an important member of the commission who could provide valuable information through his contacts and experience, said Alexander Podrabinek, editor of the Prima News human rights news service, after the sentencing.
Trepashkin had a theory that the FSB could have had a hand both in the 1999 apartment bombings and the Dubrovka hostage-taking blamed on Chechen rebels, an allegation the FSB had denied.
The apartment bombings were part of the reason why then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered federal forces back into Chechnya in 1999, a resumption of the war that sent his popularity ratings sky-high.
Despite the FSB's denial, Wednesday's verdict shows that "the authorities are clearly afraid of an open and independent investigation of the 1999 bombings and Dubrovka," Podrabinek said.
"Now we have yet another political prisoner," said Lev Ponomaryov, head of the For Human Rights movement.
Podrabinek said that the commission's investigation had wound down after Trepashkin's jailing. "It's not ruled out that we will never find out what actually happened," he said.
The sentencing is also a signal to others to avoid questioning the official statements on the commission's allegations, a "signal that we hope won't be heard," Podrabinek said.
Trepashkin's misfortunes began after he first publicly voiced the apartment bombings allegation, even before joining Kovalyov's commission, on RenTV television in late 2001.
Shortly after the interview aired, police found the ammunition in a box for threads and needles in clear view on a shelf in Trepashkin's apartment, Glushenkov said. A few days before the police raid, a former FSB colleague of Trepashkin's had visited his apartment, Glushenkov said.
The lawyer said the ammunition was planted.
The Main Military Prosecutor's Office filed a criminal case against Trepashkin but didn't jail him pending trial. Trepashkin was invited to work for Kovalyov's commission in the summer of 2002.
The second count on Trepashkin's indictment -- divulging state secrets -- appeared after the Dubrovka siege. Trepashkin then revealed four classified documents about the way the FSB operates to Viktor Shebalin, a former FSB officer he knew, prosecutors said.
Glushenkov said Trepashkin had given Shebalin only one document and asked him to pass it on to the FSB because he believed the document could lead to the people behind the Dubrovka attack, Glushenkov said. That document wasn't sensitive and the four classified documents cited by prosecutors had never been in Trepashkin's possession, Glushenkov said.
Trepashkin had gone through Shebalin because his work with Kovalyov's commission cut his access to the FSB, Glushenkov said.
Trepashkin will serve out his sentence in a prison village, said Nikolai Gorokhov, a member of his defense team.
A term in a prison village is considered the least severe punishment in the federal prison system and basically amounts to exile. Trepashkin will live in a separate house and his wife, Tatyana, will be able to join him, but he will not be allowed to leave until his term is up.
Trepashkin still faces trial in another case, also believed by his lawyers to be linked to his theory implicating the FSB. In 2002, after joining Kovalyov's commission, Trepashkin agreed to represent sisters Alyona and Tatyana Morozov, whose mother died in the blast on Ulitsa Guryanova, at the Moscow trial of two men charged with transporting explosives for the bombing. This January the men were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
Trepashkin was going to ask the Moscow court to consider his evidence, and the court could have agreed to study his findings, Trepashkin's lawyer said. But police stopped his car outside Moscow on Oct. 22 last year, a week before the trial started, and claimed to have found a handgun. Trepashkin was immediately arrested on charges of illegal arms possession.
Trepashkin says the gun was planted in the car after he was stopped.
The lawyer replacing Trepashkin in the bombing trial didn't file the motion.
A court in the Moscow region town of Dmitrov is due to start the arms possession trial on June 2, Trepashkin's lawyer in the case, Yelena Liptser, said.
Trepashkin faces up to a further three years in jail if found guilty in the Dmitrov case.
Trepashkin had earlier antagonisms with the FSB that could also be reasons for his prosecution. He supported FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko's claim in 1998 that the FSB plotted to kill then-Kremlin insider Boris Berezovsky.
Also, Trepashkin helped police ambush and arrest a Chechen gang that planned to rob a Moscow bank in 1995, but the FSB said that he had overstepped his authority.
Gorokhov said Trepashkin has complained of worsening eyesight, asthma, heart problems and dizziness since his detention.
Liptser said that, during his first two months of detention, Trepashkin had complained of being tortured.
He wasn't able to take a shower for weeks, and was held in an overcrowded cell, she said.
Defense lawyers appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, claiming that Trepashkin's jailing and torture violated rights to freedom and humane treatment guaranteed by the European human rights convention.
Late last year, the Strasbourg court sent a memorandum to the Russian government expressing concern in the case, and Trepashkin was transferred to a better cell on Dec. 30.
The court is due to consider Trepashkin's complaints after June 9, when his lawyers are due to respond to submissions from the Russian government.