Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a former German minister of justice and an observer at the first trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has released a very important report on the politically motivated abuses of courts in members of the Council of Europe, which includes a section detailing violations in Russia. The report summarizes the extraordinary pressures placed on judges, the safety of defense attorneys, and two emblematic cases of legal nihilism:  the Yukos trials and the HSBC/Hermitage affair.  The report also contains a draft resolution and recommendations for the PACE to consider.

Philip Pan from the Washington Post has a nice write up of the news: