Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Courts Handling Ingush Cases on an Assembly-Line Basis, Sabinin Says


Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 21 – Andrey Sabinin, a prominent lawyer in the North Caucasus, says that it is now clear to him courts handling the cases of Ingush protesters are not dispensing individual justice but rather processing the defendants and handling out sentences to them according to orders from above (fortanga.org/2019/09/andrej-sabinin-ingushskaya-bolotka/).

            That is perhaps no surprise, given the existence of “telephone justice” in Russia; but his reputation is such that his declaration will only add to the anger of Ingush people who have long suspected as Sabinin does that the powers that be in Moscow and Magas decided at the time of the protests exactly how they would charge and sentence demonstrators.

            And it will mean that each new decision of one of the courts, on issues like extending detentions or changing charges, will be highly predictive of what is going to happen to others, as is increasingly the situation regarding the extension of detentions from the end of September to the end of December (e.g, kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/340405/).

            Meanwhile, there were two other “Ingush” developments: Beslan Tsechoyev, who has been Magas mayor for the last four years and thus heavily involved in the handling of protests over the last year, was forced to resign by Makhud-Ali Kalimatov (doshdu.com/mjer-magasa-zajavil-ob-otstavke-po-trebovaniju-glavy-ingushetii/).

            And deputies in the Chechen parliament “unanimously” supported the call to rename the Sunzhe district, which includes some of the land former Ingush head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov transferred to Chechnya in his deal with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov a year ago (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/340403/).

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