MOSCOW, August 18, 2004 – The Russian Supreme Court has upheld the 15-year kangaroo court espionage sentence of arms control researcher Igor Sutyagin.
It’s hardly a surprise. The prosecution of Sutyagin has been orchestrated from the beginning by KGB successor FSB, and it only became easier when former FSB spy Putin came to the throne.
Sutyagin and his colleagues testified that he couldn’t have divulged classified information, because he never had access to any, but the judge ordered the jury to ignore that and all other information that did not fit well with the charge.
In the appeal hearing, the judge ordered the speaker system on the video link-up to Sutyagin’s jail cell turned off when Sutyagin began explaining the rationale for his appeal.
“For me, justice in Russia has ended with the Sutyagin case,” defense lawyer Boris Kuznetsov told the Moscow Times.
It is clear that justice in Russia is dictated by the FSB, added Ernest Chyorny, a member of the Public Committee for the Protection of Scientists.
The only difference between justice now and Justice under Stalin is that Sutyagin won’t be shot. He will simply rot in jail for the next 15 years.
“What are you going to do when Yegor comes back?” asked Vanya as I was fixing grechka with tomato sauce in the kitchen.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Anton thinks there will be war,” he replied. “And I do too.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, and continued with my cooking.
I will tell him that it’s clear to me that we do not have a sexual relationship, and perhaps not even a romantic relationship. I think he appreciates me and loves me platonically, but I’m not the most significant person in his life. He has spent more time – a lot more time -- since the first of May with his aunt and nephew, with his former lover Sergei, with Anton in his aunt’s apartment, with Lena – and now with his relatives in Dushanbe -- than with me.
He has repeatedly promised to call me and not called me. He has told me he would be back at a certain time and didn’t come back and didn’t call.
I’ve felt time and again as if he’s telling me I don’t matter.
Yegor’s ex-boyfriend Sergei called on Saturday to ask when I could pay him the $ 750 he advanced Yegor for the Dushanbe trip. I told him I could give him $ 500 immediately and the other $ 250 after the 22nd. So Sergei called me on Sunday to arrange to pick it up.
As I was handing him the $ 500, he speculated that perhaps we hadn’t heard from Yegor because maybe even e-mail isn’t allowed to go beyond the Tajikistan boundary, and perhaps he hadn’t returned because he was having trouble getting a flight back.
I grew quite concerned, so I was immensely relieved Sunday night when I at last got an e-mail from him:
“Hi Dane!!!” he began. Not even a “Dear,” no “honey,” no nothing. Just hi Dane.
How are you doing there?
I hope everything is allright.
I'm very sorry that i didnt write you, I didnt because I couldnt.
My mom and brother is ok.
I am ok too. I eat lots of tajik pies and fruits.
Tomorrow I'm going to go to the airport to get information about
tickets back.
I have bad news. Sergey's camera has been robbed. He will fuck me
for that.
In general i'm ok. At present I'm at Iwan's apartment.
I miss you very much and looking forward of hearing of you.
Yegor.
No “love,” just “Yegor.” He did say he missed me very much, but if he missed me so much why hadn’t he written earlier?
It felt cold and impersonal.
I replied in the same vein:
Hello, Yegor,
I'm very happy to hear from you. I've been quite worried. I saw Sergei
today and paid him back $ 500 of the $ 750, and he is going tomorrow to
Yugoslavia.
That's a tragedy about his camera. So I still won't have any pix from
Dushanbe! He was concerned that you had not been able to buy a ticket back, and thought that maybe even e-mail wasn't permitted out of Tajikistan, soI'm particularly relieved to hear from you.
My trip to Budapest was fun, though not spectacular.
When I returned, everything here was the same as I left except that Vanya had broken his foot and was in the hospital. I retrieved him on Wednesday.
The twins are still here, and we have become very close. Andrei has a job paying a little over $ 200 a month, and they both help with the shopping, thecooking, and the cleaning.
I've had problems with my computer, but it seems to be working okay now.
I haven't seen much of Anton. He's spent nearly every night at Denis's.
Sasha has been here since Friday, and left this afternoon. Slava and Basil were both here this afternoon.
I hope you're having a good time. Let me know when you're returning.
Dane
It’s three days later and I have heard no more from him. Still don’t know when he’s arriving.
My Sergei went to a friend’s house last night and didn’t return till this afternoon, so Andrei and I slept alone together for the first time last night. Unfortunately, he was so exhausted from work that he passed out watching TV before I went to bed, so I undressed him and put him to bed. He didn’t wake up.
I woke up this morning when I felt his hand on my chest. He was lying naked on his back. I reached over and kissed him and stroked his cock. About 20 minutes later, after he had come, we got up. As we chatted over his breakfast of tea and a cigarette, he said very seriously, “when we move to our house, I’m going to quit smoking.” It’s easier said than done, but I hope he will keep his word.
When I arrived at the offices of “Real,” the German hypermarket company,at the rear of the Aerostar Hotel for my lesson with my German students this morning, the hotel was silent as a tomb. Absent was the usual fleet of tour buses, taxis, the swarm of automobiles and people.
“The hotel’s been shut down,” announced Udo. “We don’t know if they’re going to let us stay or not.
When I got the Moscow Times later that day, I found out what had happened. As is almost de rigeur in lawless Moscow, there has been a feud between the owners and the tenants. The tenants, it turns out are a group of ex-pat Canadians who formed the hotel 13 years ago in the afterbirth of the communist collapse and leased the building for 51 rubles – about $ 1.60 – per square meter ever since. In the meantime, comparable space is renting for $ 450 to $ 520 per square meter.
The owners, somebody named Aviacity, tossed out the Canadians on Friday, forcing them to find accommodations elsewhere for some 150 hotel guests at a time when the city is already short on hotel space, with the unspeakably ugly Soviet monolith, the 3,000-room Hotel Rossiya, and several other soviet relics closed for demolition.
According to the Times, nobody’s quite sure who owns Aviacity. In one of those typically Russian byzantine swapping deals, the hotel was once owned by Aeroflot, who sold half of its shares to the Main Agency for Air Communications, which in turn fell into the hands of the Civil Aviation Ministry when the former became defunct. Ownership again changed hands to something called Aerocity in 2000, which owns a nearby shopping mall called Aviacity. And the 30 armed guards who closed the hotel all bore badges that said Aviacity.
But at least nobody’s been killed – yet. In one of the highest profile hotel ownership squabbles back in 1996, American businessman Paul Tatum, co-owner of the Radisson Slavyanskaya, was murdered in an ownership dispute with the City of Moscow. A couple of other owners or managers of other hotels have also been killed in similar disagreements.
So does the fact that no one’s been murdered yet in the dispute mean that Moscow is becoming more civilized?
No, as the murder of Forbes’ Klebnikov blaringly demonstreates:
In fact, there are actually more mafia hits and contract murders each year in Moscow now than there were during the lawless ’90s a decade ago, according to the Interior Ministry’s Scientific Institute, the Moscow agency that keeps track of such things.
“We’re seeing between 500 and 700 such killings annually,” says its director, Leonid Kondratyuk. And those are just the murders they can prove were mafia related. “In reality, it’s probably two or three times higher.”
The former deputy secretary of the Security Council says it’s much worse: Organized crime was responsible for 26,000 crimes in 2003, compared to a mere 3,300 in 1999, Valentin Stepankov told an international seminar in January. Around 5,000 of them were contract killings.
Anyway, I hope Real doesn’t lose its space. It’s incredibly convenient for me, and enables me to easily get to my 10 a.m. class at Sokol Metro Station with a 15-min. trolley ride. If I have to go to Real’s other office, it’s going to complicate my life immensely.
See also related pages:
Chapt. #258 - Putin wraps himself in a constitution he doesn’t believe in
