COURT
DENIES
PROSECUTOR NEW EXPERT ANALYSIS IN ZALIPAEV CASE
Kavkazskii
Uzel, 28
August 2020
The
Maisky district
court did not satisfy the request of the state's prosecutor to
order a new
expert analysis in the case of Jehovah's Witness Yury Zalipaev
and it scheduled
the debates of the sides for 18 September, lawyer Anton
Omelchenko reported.
As
Kavkazskii Uzel
has written, the Maisky disrict court of Kabardino-Balkaria has
been
considering the case of Yury Zalipaev since 16 July 2018. While
there has been a
break in the session that has lasted almost a year. Then after
the break, on 9
July the prosecutor did not appear in court and the session was
postponed. The
court can start the debates, but a petition by the prosecution
is dragging out
the process, Zalipaev's lawyer said at the time. On 27 July,
based on a
petition by the prosecutor, the court summoned for questioning
the experts who
had drawn the conclusion about an absence of evidence of
extremism in
Zalipaev's statements. On 24 August, in court, the authors of
the expert
analysis confirmed their conclusions. The lawyer again pointed
out that the
prosecution was unjustifiably dragging out the trial. On 26
August, the
prosecutor requested a new expert analysis in the Zalipaev case,
but the
defense objected.
Today in
the Maisky
district court in the trial of Jehovah's Witness Yury Zalipaev,
the court
refused to grant the state prosecutor's request to order yet
another expert
analysis, lawyer Anton Omelchenko told a Kavkazskii Uzel
correspondent.
"The
ruling
announced by the court was rather voluminous, analyzing the
entire history of
the issue of the use of special scientific knowledge in the
Zalipaev case. The
announcement took about an hour and a half," Omelchenko
reported.
He said
the judge
took into consideration the conclusions of the experts. After
this, the court
moved to a discussion of the question of beginning the debates.
"The state
prosecutor requested time for preparing for the debates until 18
September
2020. The court granted this request and scheduled the session
for 10.00
(Moscow time) on the indicated date," the attorney said.
We
recall that in
January 2019, a judge of the Maisky district court, on the basis
of the
prosecutor's petition, closed a criminal case against Zalipaev
based on part 1
of article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code because of the
decriminalization of
actions falling under this article, but the indictment based on
part 1 of
article 280 of the Russian CC (public calls for conducting
extremist activity)
remained in force. (tr. by PDS, posted 31 August 2020)
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