Advocate Dorogova files a complaint to the Public Prosecutor of Kabardino-Balkaria

Larissa Dorogova, a lawyer of the Kabardino-Balkarian Bar, has lodged a complaint that she was not admitted to her defendant to O. Zharikov, Public Prosecutor of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR).

The complaint runs that on January 31, 2008, she was not admitted to meet her client - defendant Zaur Tokhov, kept in the SIZO (pre-trial facility), a figurant in the case on attack on KBR power agencies in October 2005.

Ms Dorogova writes that she addressed on the issue to the public prosecutor who supervises the SIZO but found no support from him.

The formal cause of her non-admittance to the defendant, as advocate Dorogova has explained, was her earlier estrangement from this criminal case because she had been interrogated as a witness.

"It's absolutely clear," Larissa Dorogova asserts, "that my client may need consultation on any other issue, for example, a civil or family case, on his rights in relation to his complaint to the European Court, and I have the right to conduct any another Tokhov's case, except for the above one. Meanwhile, the SIZO administration hinders my lawful activity, and I'm now forced to defend my rights up to the European Court."

Ms Dorogova told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that defendant Tokhov suffers from streptoderma, he has purulent abscesses on his body. Besides, he has cough and heavy short wind, so strange for a young man. When in SIZO, he was operated on because of exudative pleurisy with tubercular ethiology and is registered at the phthisiatric dispensary. Tokhov's wife told the advocate that before his arrest he was absolutely healthy, and has become an invalid after his two years in custody.

In her complaint the advocate asks to oblige SIZO employees not to interfere with her visits to defendant Tokhov as his legal representative and to appoint his complex medical examination and treatment.