MIKHAIL TREPASHKIN RE-ARRESTED

On August 19 Mikhail Trepashkin was granted parole by the Nizhniy Tagillocal court. The local prosecutor, who was present at the hearing raised no objection. (Trepashkin was serving four years for disclosing official secrets. The other charge of gun possesion was overturned by the Moscow Appeals Court in July 2005)

On Aug 29, after 10 days allowed to appeal the ruling has expired, the
parole decision took force, and Trepashkin was released from the colony. He appeared in Moscow on August 31. On September 2 he held a press-conference announcing a new NGO, called the Committee for the Defense of Lawyers' Rights.

The Sverdlovsk Regional Prosecutor appealed the parole on August 31, 2 days after initial court decision took force. The Appeals Court ruled to extend the appeal time on September 2 in a retroactive action, which is unlawful.

The hearings of the appeal took place on Friday, Sept 16 in Sverdlovsk
Appeals Court in Yekaterinburg. The court ruled to overturn the parole
decision and to return the case for a new hearing back to the Nizhniy Tagil local court. The prosecution argued that Trepashkin has not "taken the path of correction".

On the same day Trepashkin flew to Kiev, where representatived of Foundation for Civil Liberties offered him assistance in fleeing to a third country and claiming asylum. He refused saying that "running away would be an admission of guilt" and returned to Moscow on September 17. His visit to Kiev was not a violation since his parole had no travel restrictions and his passport was not taken away.

He was arrested in Moscow on Sunday September 18, again unlawfully, becuse no court ordered his detention. For 2 days his wife and lawyers did not know where he is held. Then on September 20, a reporter found out that he is held in the remand center No 1 in Yekaterinburg.

On September 20 Rusian press reported that Vladimir Chegodayev, the Deputy Prosecutor of Nizhniy Tagil who was present at the original parole hearings has been fired.

Press Reports

Former security officer's arms conviction overturned, state secrets
conviction remains
1 July 2005
Associated Press Newswires
(c) 2005. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
MOSCOW (AP) - A court on Friday rescinded the illegal arms-possession
conviction of a former security officer who is also imprisoned on charges of divulging state secrets.
The overturning of Mikhail Trepashkin's conviction reduces his sentence by one year. In 2003, the former officer of the Federal Security Service -- the KGB's main successor agency -- was convicted of divulging state secrets and sentenced to four years; the arms conviction this year had added another year to his prison time. Trepashkin says security services fabricated the charges to avenge his investigation into a series of apartment bombings in 1999 that were part of the Kremlin's justification for deploying troops to Chechnya; some observers say they suspect security officials of staging the bombings.

Trepashkin Freed From Prison Early
Combined Reports
1 September 2005
The Moscow Times
Mikhail Trepashkin, the former Federal Security Service officer who was
convicted of revealing state secrets, has been freed from prison early, his lawyer and rights activists said Wednesday.
A court in the Urals town of Nizhny Tagil, where Trepashkin was serving his sentence, ordered the release after he had served a third of his term since being held in custody in December 2003, defense lawyer Yelena Liptser said, Interfax reported.
Trepashkin, now a lawyer, has claimed that security services fabricated the charges to avenge his investigation into a series of deadly apartment bombings in 1999 that were part of the Kremlin's justification for deploying troops to Chechnya.
Authorities blamed Chechen rebels, but some observers say they suspect security officials of staging the bombings, which killed about 300 people. The Federal Security Service, or FSB, where Trepashkin worked until 1997, alleged that the former officer was recruited by Britain's MI-5 security service to collect compromising materials on the explosions with the aim of discrediting the FSB.
According to the FSB, Trepashkin was to pass the information on to another former FSB officer, Alexander Litvinenko, and to tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who would give it to MI-5. Litvinenko and Berezovsky both have been given political asylum in Britain.

Russian human rights' activists announce new NGO to protect lawyers
2 September 2005
Agence France Presse
English
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2005 All reproduction and presentation
rights reserved.
MOSCOW, Sept 2 (AFP) -
Russian human rights' activists condemned the persecution of Russian lawyers on Friday and announced the creation of a new non-government organisation (NGO) to defend them from politically motivated attacks.
The new NGO, called the Committee for the Defense of Lawyers' Rights, will be headed by dissident lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin, who accused the Russian secret services of "controlling the courts and prosecutors".
Trepashkin was conditionally released from prison this week after serving a third of a four-year sentence for revealing state secrets as a state intelligence officer between 1984-1997 and possession of ammunition, which he claims was planted on him by police.
He was one of several lawyers to probe the bomb explosions in Moscow in 1999 that were blamed on Chechen terrorists and claimed to have uncovered evidence that suggested the Russian government was complicit in the attacks.
The director of the For Human Rights organisation, Lev Ponomarev, estimated that about 10 Russian lawyers had been unfairly prosecuted in the last 12 months.

Court to hear appeal against Trepashkin's early release
3 September 2005
Interfax News Service
(c) 2005 Interfax Information Services, B.V.
MOSCOW. Sept 3 (Interfax) - The Sverdlovsk Regional Court will hear an
appeal on September 16 by the prosecution against a court ruling under which former Federal Security Service officer Mikhail Trepashkin, convicted of divulging national secrets, was released on August 30 after serving part of his four-year sentence.
The prosecutor's office of Nizhny Tagil, where Trepashkin was serving his sentence, appealed his release on August 31.
Trepashkin's lawyer Yelena Liptser told Interfax that his defense team
believes the appeal means "further persecution of Trepashkin, because he has said he will work on defending the rights of convicts, and [because of] the fact that he has been put at the head of a new committee to defend lawyers in the movement For Human Rights."

Russian court overturns decision to release former security service officer from prison
16 September 2005
Associated Press Newswires
MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian regional court has overturned a lower court's
decision to release Mikhail Trepashkin, a lawyer and former Russian security service officer who was convicted of revealing state secrets, his lawyer said Friday.
Trepashkin has claimed that security services fabricated the charges to
avenge his investigation into a series of deadly apartment bombings in 1999 that were part of the Kremlin's justification for deploying troops to
Chechnya. Authorities blamed Chechen rebels, but some observers said they suspected security officials of staging the bombings, which killed about 300 people.
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, where Trepashkin worked until 1997, alleged that the former officer was recruited by the British security service MI-5 to collect compromising materials on the explosions with the aim of discrediting the FSB.
Trepashkin arrived in Moscow last month after being freed from prison in the Urals city of Nizhny Tagil, where he was serving four years. His lawyer, Yelena Lipster, said Friday that the regional court in the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals had satisfied prosecutors' appeal of Trepashkin's release.

Monday, September 19, 2005.

Police Detain Trepashkin 2 Weeks After Release
The Associated Press

Police on Sunday re-imprisoned Mikhail Trepashkin, a former FSB officer who was released last month after serving just under half of his four-year sentence on charges of revealing state secrets, his lawyer said.
Trepashkin, who had investigated the alleged role of the Federal Security Service in a series of apartment bombings in 1999, was detained at his home in Moscow, his lawyer Yelena Lipster said.
On Friday, a Sverdlovsk region court overturned a lower court decision to release him early for good behavior. Trepashkin arrived in Moscow on Aug. 31 after being freed from prison in Nizhny Tagil.
Trepashkin's wife, Tatyana, was quoted by RIA-Novosti as saying that police officers read the court ruling and said that they were taking him back to the prison in Nizhny Tagil.
"They were after him so much that now they will not let him go," she said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Trepashkin, who had been in prison since his October 2003 arrest, has
claimed that the FSB fabricated the charges in revenge for his investigation into the apartment bombings, which were part of the Kremlin's justification for sending troops back into Chechnya in 1999.
The FSB, where Trepashkin worked until 1997, claimed that the former officer was recruited by the British security service MI5 to collect compromising materials on the explosions with the aim of discrediting the FSB. Trepashkin, now a lawyer, had been in Kiev with his wife Saturday and refused an offer from self-exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky to help him fly to a Western European country and apply for political asylum, an aide to Berezovsky said.
"He went back knowing fully that such a development was possible. This is a clear persecution of this man," Alex Goldfarb said by telephone. Berezovsky, a fierce Kremlin critic, has been granted political asylum in Britain.

Missing Moscow bombings investigator found in prison
20 September 2005
BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union
(c) 2005 The British Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved. No
material may be reproduced except with the express permission of The British Broadcasting Corporation.
Mikhail Trepashkin's defence lawyer, Yelena Liptser, has found out that her client is held in remand centre No 1 in Yekaterinburg, Russian news agency Ekho Moskvy reported on 20 September quoting the Gazeta.ru website. Trepashkin, former Federal Security Service officer, now independent lawyer and human rights activist, known for his attempts to carry out a public investigation of the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings, was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of disseminating classified information, released early on 30 August and re-arrested on 18 September in Moscow.
Trepashkin's wife, Tatyana, earlier told Ekho Moskvy that she had received no information about her husband's whereabouts since the moment of his arrest.
Trepashkin's former colleague now staying in the UK, Aleksandr Litvinenko, told Ekho Moskvy in a telephone interview from London on 20 September that he believed that Trepashkin's life was in danger. "Today his life is in the hands of the Russian public, journalists and human rights activists. If we pay no attention to his case, his life will be in real danger, I'm afraid," Litvinenko said.
Source: Ekho Moskvy news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1335 gmt 20 Sep 05

These are the Russian press reports about firing of Vladimir Chegodayev, the
regional prosecutor
http://www.annews.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1 6527
http://www.newsru.com/russia/20sep2005/trepashkin.html
http://lenta.ru/news/2005/09/20/fired/

For full background see http://www.eng.trepashkin.ru

"The hero of our time"
fragment (7,73 MB)

Achemez Gochiyaev
A photofit sketch

The Arrest

Trepashkin was arrested on October 22, 2003 for illegal arms possession. He was stopped by traffic police, while a group of officers was waiting at the roadside. They openly threw a bag into his car, and then “discovered” an unregistered gun in the bag. He was taken away, and was beaten and tortured. His mistreatment stopped only after his case attracted international attention.

The International Commission of Jurists called Trepashkin’s persecution "a mockery of the rule of law".

The US State Department cited his case as an example of abuse of the legal system for political purposes

The European Court of Human Rights has taken up Trepashkin’s case on an extraordinary basis.

The Spying Charge

According to The Guardian Trepashkin has been accused by the FSB of collecting information about the Moscow apartment bombings on behalf of the British intelligence service MI5 with the aim of “discrediting the FSB”. Trepashkin’s wife Tatyana, has appealed to the British Prime Minister Tony Blair to refute the allegations.

Who is Mikhail Trepashkin

Mr Trepashkin has a long history of confrontation with the FSB. He is a former FSB investigator himself, who was fired from the agency in 1996 after refusing to cover up a corruption case involving high-ranking officials. In 1998 he took part in a much-publicized press conference alleging widespread corruption and extrajudicial killings by FSB.

Trepashkin was brought into the private probe of the Moscow bombings by Sergey Yushenkov, a Russian MP, after his motion to officially investigate the attacks was defeated in the Parliament in early 2002.

Yushenkov was assassinated on April 17 2003. In June 2003, Tatyana Morozova - who visited Moscow with the Disbelief filming crew - hired Trepashkin to represent the Morozov family in the case of her mother's death in the explosion on Guryanov Street.

The Smoking Gun: What He Found

Trepashkin obtained testimony of the landlord of Tatyana Morozova's apartment block who said that someone other than the prime suspect rented the space where the bomb was planted.

The landlord told Trepashkin that the police sketch compiled from his description after the bombing was not of Achemez Gochiyaev, a Chechen fugitive whom the FSB says organized the attack. The sketch was later recalled, and the landlord was pressured by the FSB to identify Gochiyaev, whom he had never seen, from a photograph.

After Trepashkin’s arrest his evidence was corroborated by a Moscow weekly Moskovskie Novosty, who interviewed the landlord.

In the tape, Trepashkin names the man in the initial police sketch. This is Vladimir Romanovich, an undercover FSB agent specializing in infiltrating Chechen groups, who was killed by a car in Cyprus a few months after the bombings. Trepashkin says that Romanovich had been arrested in 1996 as part of a Chechen ring in Moscow, but was released after intervention by the FSB higher-ups and mentions documents and witnesses to corroborate this.

Vladimir Romanovich
A photofit sketch

The New Evidence: What Trepashkin Found

Some of the new evidence was revealed by the weekly Moskovskiye Novosty, which interviewed Trepashkin just hours before his arrest. Trepashkin said that the landlord of Tatyana Morozova's apartment block recognized someone other than the prime suspect as the man who rented the space where the bomb was planted.

After Trerpashkin's arrest, the landlord told Moskovskiye Novosty in a taped interview that the police sketch compiled from his description after the bombing was not of Achemez Gochiyaev. The sketch was later recalled, and the landlord was pressured by the FSB to identify Mr. Gochiyaev, whom he had never seen, from a photograph.

According to Moskovskiye Novosty, Mr. Trepashkin had named the man whom he and several other witnesses recognized from the initial police sketch. This was Vladimir Romanovich, an undercover FSB agent specializing in infiltrating Chechen groups, who was killed by a car
in Cyprus a few months after the bombings. According to Trepashkin, Romanovich had been arrested in 1996 as part of a Chechen ring in Moscow, but was released after intervention by the FSB higher-ups.

“I am at peace with myself”

“Are you not afraid? By persisting in your investigations you are putting your own life on the line!”, - asks Tatyana in the film.

“Well, what can I say”, - answers Trepashkin. – “I have a cause and I believe it is just. Even my own former colleagues from the FSB will testify that I’ve never deceived or betrayed anyone. So I am in peace with myself.”

Links:

Full story: The Trepashkin Case
http://www.eng.trepashkin.ru