Yuri Schmidt on the Kuchma Lawsuit
The following is a translation from Khodorkovsky.ru:
Yuri Schmidt: “Kuchma, this is not a plaintiff, it is a dummy figure”
Meshchansky District Court of Moscow postpones session to 25 February.
On Friday, the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow was supposed to examine a lawsuit about compensation of moral damage, filed by the inmate Kuchma against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but because the court did not have at its disposal information that the plaintiff had been duly notified of the process, they postponed the session to 25 February. Lawyer Yuri Schmidt, who has accumulated 50 questions for Kuchma, considers that the “dummy figure” of the plaintiff is being directed by official persons of the Chita UFSIN and FSIN, aspiring to create “intolerable conditions of the serving of punishment” for Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Only the lawyers of the defendant appeared at today’s session;neither Kuchma nor his representatives were in the courtroom. In orderto get ahold of Kuchma now already for the next session, the court isgoing to have to send three notifications: according to one set ofdata, the inmate Kuchma is found now in Chita; according to otherinformation, he is being held either in the Muscovite «Matrosskayatishina», or in the Vladimir central. The swift shufflings of theinmate Kuchma all over the country, to those places where he canwitness against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the lawyer Schmidt called “anout-of-the-ordinary circumstance”.
Lawyer Natalia Terekhova declared a petition about participation inthe examination of the dispute of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The courtoverruled the petition. Then lawyer Yuri Schmidt read out a petition inwhich he asked the court to demand from the colony, the procuracy andUFSIN a series of documents having significance of principle for theexamination and resolution of the case. What was being spoken of, inpart, was demanding from the Krasnokamensk colony the results of aninquiry carried out based on the fact of the confinement ofKhodorkovsky and Kuchma in the ShIZO for imbibing tea in an improperplace, as well as the results of an inquiry that took place after theattack by Kuchma with a knife on Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The courtsatisfied this petition partially.
After the session, Yuri Schmidt came up to journalists and recountedthat the dirty accusations of Kuchma against his client were supposedto have been sounded already on 21 August of the year 2008 at a sessionwhere the question about the conditional early release of MikhailKhodorkovsky was being decided. For this they had specially deliveredthe inmate Kuchma without any court order from a Vladimir jail to Chita(after the Krasnokamensk colony as a malicious violator of the regimeof detention Kuchma successively spent time in cell-type premises(PKT), in solitary cell-type premises (EPKT) and, finally, by decisionof a court was transferred to a jail regime).
After a judge of the Ingodinsky District Court refused to hear thetestimony of Kuchma as not having to do with CER, the latter already on25 August filed in the Ingodinsky District Court a lawsuit on thecompensation of moral damage and accused Mikhail Khodorkovsky of sexualsolicitations. The court refused to accept the lawsuit, while the ChitaOblast Court supported this position. Then the inmate Kuchma redirectedthe documents to the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow.
Yuri Schmidt especially underscored that the lawsuit of the heroinaddict Kuchma contains references to the norms of the CivC and CCivP(i.e. is sufficiently literate), is printed out on a computer, whilethe interests of the inmate in the Chita Oblast Court were representedby staff employee of UFSIN Ms. O. V. Andreyeva. The lawyer Schmidt’sexplanation for such unheard-of concern about the rights of the inmateKuchma is that the whole business of hanging amoralki on Khodorkovsky”is an invention and the favorite child of employees of FSIN”. By theway, the lawyer considers that the desire to tarnish Khodorkovsky witha “lawsuit revolting in its essence” will not lead to anything. “On asmart audience this lawsuit will create the exact opposite impression,and those who wanted to attain the objective of besmirchingKhodorkovsky will besmirch only themselves”, – declared Yuri Schmidt.
