Havana Cuba. — Unfortunately, the forecast that I expressed on the 12th, in these same pages of CubaNet, about the trial of prominent Russian dissident Vladimir Kará-Murzá. On that occasion, paraphrasing the immense writer and small politician Gabriel García Márquez, I expressed that, in the face of the ruthless accusation made against the brave Russian opponent, it was only appropriate to make the “chronicle of an announced sanction.”
But it is also necessary to recognize that the duration of the sentence decreed this Monday by the court that tried him is surprising due to its brutality. Putin’s judges, in the paroxysm of ferocity and abjection, have seen fit to impose a quarter of a century of imprisonment on the sharp critic of the dictator who commands them! The same twenty five years that he was interested in the Prosecutor’s Office!
The excessive duration of the punishment now decreed has led me to remember the time, already so far away, when I was studying law in Moscow. The specialty was International Law, but in the initial years of the degree we were also examined —among other things— on the different branches of Soviet internal legislation.
And one of the aspects that our Criminal Law professors insisted on was limiting the maximum sentence of deprivation of liberty: as a rule, ten years, a term that, only in cases of especially serious crimes, could be extended up to fifteen (No However, it should be remembered that the death penalty was still in force, which, although not as much as in Stalin’s time, was still applied quite frequently).
But now Putin’s judges throw away those principles that those who instructed us stressed! They impose on the defendant exactly the same penalty requested by the Prosecutor! They did not even deign (because of appearing a little impartial) to lower one or two years of the many requested by the public prosecutor!
In fact, the punishment now ordered stands out, for the notable difference in the number of years in prison, to the ones imposed as recently as 2022 on other prominent Russian opponents. In the cases of Alexéi Navalny and Ilyá Yashin, the dictator and his amanuensis of legal repression sentenced to nine years or less. But now they have tripled the length of the ban! This is clear proof of the degree of despair that grips Putin and those around him.
Colleague Alexander Podrabínek is absolutely right in the world when, in his comment on the terrorist sanction imposed on Kará-Murzá, he expresses: “As far as political repression is concerned, the country has returned not to the times of Brezhnev, of Andropov or Khrushchev; it has plunged headlong into the Stalin era, with its 25-year sentences imposed on the basis of NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) fantasies about counter-revolutionary activities.”
The reaction that the accused himself had when he found out about the new Putin outrage is worth mentioning. Saving the distances, the serenity shown by the Russian opponent made me remember the brilliant occurrence of President Ronald Reagan to the surgeons who were going to operate on him from the gunshot wounds caused by John Hinckley Jr. “I hope you are all Republicans,” he told them. .
Kará-Murzá’s comment, although he does not show the same sense of humor, is not exempt from sarcasm, and does show a similar level of equanimity: “My self-esteem has risen! I realize that I have been doing the right thing!” she said. Or as the lawyer María Eismont expressed: The punishment implies a “high recognition” of the work of her defendant.
The international condemnation of this new atrocity perpetrated by the regime headed by Vladimir Putin has not been long in coming. The United Kingdom (a country whose citizenship is also held by Kará-Murzá) summoned the Ambassador of the Slavic country to express its rejection. “Russia’s lack of commitment to protecting fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression, is alarming,” he reads one. statement James Cleverly, British Foreign Secretary.
A similar document issued in Washington by the State Department expresses itself in similar terms: “The United States condemns the 25-year prison sentence imposed on Vladimir Kará-Murzá for speaking out against the aggressive war unleashed by the Russian government against Ukraine. ”.
In this context, the cordial welcome given in Brazil, this very Monday!, to Sergei Lavrov, the highest international representative of the Putin dictatorship, is out of place. I consider it deplorable that the government of a democratic country as large as Brazil chooses a moment like this for such an act, which implies recognition of Russia and its policies.
The occurrence that the Brazilian president had when he alluded, last Sunday in Abu Dhabi, to “two nations that had decided to go to war” also seems enormous to me. With this, as is obvious, he places the aggressor (Russia) and the attacked (Ukraine) on the same plane. As if both had the same degree of guilt!
Actions and statements of this type, perpetrated when a dignified man like Kará-Murzá is sent to prison for a quarter of a century, demean to an extreme degree the “socialists of the 21st century”, of which Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva is a prominent representative.
OPINION ARTICLE
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