The Open Trial that Wasn’t
On Tuesday, it looked as if the Anna Politkovskaya trial would be open to journalists. Today, the judge Yevgeny Zubov, decided at the last moment that it would be closed. The reason he gave was that the jury refused to participate if the trial was open to the media. Zubkov had already warned that he would close the proceedings if “a juror made a single request.”
Nevertheless, there are those that smell something rotten in the Moscow Military District Court. Karinna Moskalenko, the non-poisoned lawyer for the Politikovskaya family, was disappointed, but not surprised. Is anyone? He says that the Zubkov had “not offered convincing evidence of the need to bar the public for the safety of the jury.” “I could expect this is there were a threat to the jury,” she told reporters. Novaya gazeta noted that,
It’s notable that a day earlier when the jurors were sworn in, not a ..read more
