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Sergey Kovalyov

SERGEY KOVALYOV: I was hoping to be invited here not to renew an old argument about definitions. When we spoke to Sergey Davidis on the telephone, it became clear, at least generally speaking, that we had no disagreements. Just little things. With [Valentin] Gefter they decided to call theirs a

SERGEY KOVALYOV: I was hoping to be invited here not to renew an old argument about definitions. When we spoke to Sergey Davidis on the telephone, it became clear, at least generally speaking, that we had no disagreements. Just little things. With [Valentin] Gefter they decided to call theirs a “double-key position.” One of them is the authorities’ political interest, and the other consists of the most wide-ranging procedural and other violations during the investigation of a case, in court and so on.

From my point of view, it’s all very simple.

A prisoner of conscience is a person who did not break the law. He merely exercised his right, and for some reason the authorities perceived this as a danger to themselves.

As for the political prisoner, this is a figure resulting from the presence of a “servile law,” from the dependence of the courts on the authorities. Which means that whether this prisoner has his own political views, whether his actions were politically motivated or not is irrelevant. He becomes a political prisoner only when an unlawful motive is applied, especially a political motive on the authorities’ behalf.

This motive may sometimes not be of a political nature, but for the sake of simplicity we will not be going into these cases. A “servile court” is biased to selfish motives. There you are, such a wonderful and authoritative organisation as Amnesty International refused to recognise the employees of Yukos as political prisoners on the sole basis that there were no obvious political motives in the dealings of Yukos employees. But they are not necessary! Only political motives witnessed in the actions of the prosecution are necessary and that is it.

As soon as the “Great October Revolution” was completed, another revolution was completed in the field of justice. A very outspoken concept prevailed, in which the political motives of the state occupied a central position. This was not concealed, this was recorded and served as a major consideration for a judge at a court session, for the the prosecutor setting forth the accusation, and as unfortunate as it may sound, the lawyer when he gave his speech. All of them agreed on one thing: “law” is the will of the ruling class, expressed in the form of a “law.” Hence our history of political prisoners.

This story is not over yet, it’s continuing just like it did before. What [Valentin] Gefter and [Sergey] Davidis call the “second key” (a sum of different kinds of violations, exposing the notorious unlawfulness of the court judgement) is secondary, but extremely important. Because we often are not able to discover and prove a direct order, a direct indication of a court serving the authorities. A conviction which is knowingly unjust must always, I believe, serve as a motivation for the most thorough investigation. This investigation would also be requested for the review of unlawful convictions from the higher judicial authorities.

Thank you.

OLEG ORLOV: When I was presenting Sergey Adamovich Kovalyov I forgot to say that he was a former political prisoner, more precisely a prisoner of conscience.

SERGEY KOVALYOV: On the decision of that very Amnesty International, which is now wandering in broad daylight.

ZOYA SVETOVA: I’m sorry, but I just want to clarify as I need to go now. As far as I’m aware, Amnesty recognised Khodorkovsky and Lebedev as prisoners of conscience?

FRIEDERIKE BEHR: Yes, of course.

OLEG ORLOV: Please, let’s move on. Friederike will tell us about this in her statement.

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