Agranovskiy: media campaign against Arakcheev is consequence of putting him on the list of political prisoners

Putting Sergey Arakcheev on the list of political prisoners has provoked an information campaign against him in mass media, said the lawyer Dmitry Agranovskiy during a press conference on resonant cases against former militaries convicted for criminal offences.

The press conference was held on February 14 at the Independent Press Centre in Moscow, and was attended by advocates of the convicts Sergey Arakcheev and Sergey Klimuk, a former FSB officer, who was found guilty of organizing the explosion in Cherkizovo Marketplace in Moscow in 2006 and sentenced to life imprisonment. The event was also attended by advocates of the acquitted GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff) Colonel Vladimir Kvachkov, who had been accused of preparing an armed rebellion and terrorism.

The need to hold a press conference appeared after the protesters in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow had put Arakcheev on the list of Russian political prisoners, the lawyer Dmitry Agranovskiy told the reporters.

After that, according to his story, "an information campaign was launched in the media, which pictured Arakcheev not as a political prisoner but as a killer; and nothing was said that he had been twice acquitted by jurymen."

The lawyer has noted that "everyone may defend Sergey Arakcheev; however, he did not ask about it." Agranovskiy also stated that "Arakcheev is not a political prisoner, and not a politician; he is just a spontaneous patriot."

Dmitry Agranovskiy told the audience that the case of his client Sergey Klimuk was accompanied by a number of violations, which in the practice of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) had caused cancellation of verdicts.

These violations include, for example, the fact that the court failed to satisfy Klimuk's motion to withdraw the lawyer appointed to him under Article 51 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, even after the lawyer had asked for self-withdrawal.

Besides, Agranovskiy believes that holding the trial behind closed doors was a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The court disregarded the absence of evidence that the victim in this case were in danger.