23 November 2006, 22:17
People think Stomakhin's trial to be a politically motivated persecution
On November 20 in Moscow, Boris Stomakhin, journalist of the "Kavkaz-Tsentr" Chechen separatists' web-site, was sentenced to five years of custody. On Wednesday, the Independent Press Centre held a press conference on this occasion under the motto "Verdict to Boris Stomakhin is cancellation of freedom of speech. Russophobia will replace Stalin's 58th Article of the Criminal Code." Valentin Gefter, director of the Human Rights Institute, Valeria Novodvorskaya, leader of the Democratic Union, Konstantin Borovoy, politician and businessman, and also human rights activist Elena Sannikova and Stomakhin's advocate Alexei Golubov, shared their opinions with journalists.
The audience was uniform in one conclusion: five years in prison is a suitable term for a criminal, but not for the person, whose weapon was the word. "Boris Stomakhin, while defending the Chechen people and blaming Putin's regime, did it with such ardour and in such inappropriate expressions, that his articles and formulations looked more like a provocation or parody," V. Novodvorskaya noted in her statement.
In the opinion of the participants of the press conference, Boris Stomakhin was just made guilty in a "political trial on dissentients in the spirit of Brezhnev-Andropov times," and the only guilt of the defendant was that he had expressed, in an extremely eccentric form, what many people think today about the war in Chechnya and actions of Russian power agencies.
We remind you that Boris Stomakhin was accused, among other things, of supporting terrorists and of extremist propaganda.
