Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 28 – The Victory Day
amnesty Vladimir Putin has promised “repeats all the mistakes of an analogous
measure of 15 years ago, when the godfathers of organized crime along with
repeat rapists and murders were released from prison” on an unsuspecting
population, according to “Versia” journalist Ruslan Gorevoy and the experts he
spoke with.
Indeed, they suggest that the poorly
drafted amnesty plan coming from the Kremlin opens the way not only to massive
corruption within the penal system but also could lead to the release of terrorists,
pedophiles and cannibals as well, raising the question “haven’t we learned
anything from our mistakes?” (versia.ru/po-amnistii-v-chest-70-letiya-pobedy-na-volyu-mogut-vyjti-lyudoedy-nasilniki-i-ubijcy).
The
current amnesty like its predecessor in 2000 releases those who are suffering
from cancer or tuberculosis, who have medical decorations, or the status of
invalids. “Is this humane?” Gorevoy asks, suggesting that no one should “hurry
to agree” given that could allow those guilty of the most heinous crimes to go
free if they lack a leg, an arm, or can get medical certification.
This
Putin amnesty, like its predecessor, features bold declarations that such
things won’t happen, but it contains no legally enforceable language to prevent
that – and in fact, Gorevoy suggests, it opens new possibilities for various
kinds of corruption as those inside prisons work to get certified as having
conditions allowing for their release.
Given
that the heads of jails and camps will have the right to sign off on such certificates,
Vladimir Osechkin, a human rights activist, says, this virtually guarantees
that there will be “a trading in amnesties,” something that will involve
exactly the kind of corruption that the criminals and their jailors won’t be
able to resist.
One
large group that is certain to get out under this amnesty, Eva Merkacheva, a
member of Moscow’s public observer commission, will be siloviki who have been
convicted for exceeding their authority by beating or killing those under
arrest in order to extract confessions. She says that in her view, the current
amnesty is a sell-out to the siloviki “lobby.”
But
what will undoubtedly attract attention is that the current amnesty as drafted
does nothing to prevent the release of those guilty of cannibalism, pedophilia
and other sex crimes – even those who gained widespread attention because of
the seriousness of these offenses, Gorevoy says.
Moreover,
because the amnesty in 2000, Putin’s first, largely recapitulated all the
mistakes of the last Soviet-era amnesty in 1987, when “more than 60,000
prisoners, three quarters of whom were bandits, were turned loose on the
streets,” one result is certain beyond all others: many of those released will
soon be back behind bars for new crimes against society.
In
1990, for example, at least 16,000 of the 60,000 released three years earlier
were again in penal institutions, a pattern that was repeated in 2000 and is
likely to be repeated, following a new outburst of crime as a result of Putin’s
incautious actions in the coming years.
Two experts with whom Gorevoy spoke are disturbed by what
is happening. Valery Borshchyov, a rights activist with the Moscow Helsinki
Group, says that the draft amnesty plan this time around is “qualitatively”
different from the two most recent mass amnesties “and not for the better”
given that the new measure does not define key terms and thus invites abuse.
Pavel
Krasheninnikov, chairman of the Duma committee on civil, criminal, arbitrage and
procedural legislation, agrees, saying that the proposed amnesty could release
as few as 60,000 or lead to the release or dropping of criminal charges against
as many as 350,000 to 400,000, with all the negative consequences that could
involve.
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