The authorities decided to quickly go for the jugular with the organisation. The hearing took just half a day. The whole time it seemed like we were rushing somewhere. The defence team’s requests were swatted aside one after the other, including the petitions to have a five-minute break (at least one in five hours) and to move the hearing to a bigger room where someone apart from the defendants and prosecutors could fit. The judge ruled that the hearing would continue in the same courtroom, only three writing journalists were let in, the rest were directed to the broadcast hall. A Mediazona correspondent stated that all seats for members of the public were occupied by student interns. The Moscow Helsinki Group members, who were not participating in the hearing, and foreign diplomats proceeded to the hall to watch the trial on TV screens.
The judge rejected the defence team’s request to summon their witnesses wishing to testify on the episodes imputed to the MHG by the Justice Ministry: the court trials heard outside of Moscow. Of course, the judge consulted himself and rejected it as well.
The task to liquidate the Moscow Helsinki Group was given to judge Mikhail Kazakov, the same judge who shut down another human rights centre, Memorial, in December 2021. It seems like Kazakov has earned quite a reputation for it.
‘Look for defence in Podolsk’
One of the biggest issues the Justice Ministry had with the Moscow Helsinki Group was that the human rights activists worked in other regions and not just in Moscow where the organisation is registered. The agency counted 11 cases which they branded as “serious irreconcilable violations”. These included a court hearing in Yaroslavl in 2020 in prison torture case, a court hearing in 2020 in the case of former Moscow region official Alexander Shestun (MHG executive director Svetlana Astrakhantseva was openly shocked and asked the judge: “Shestun’s family contacted the Moscow Helsinki Group. What were we supposed to say? Look for defence in Podolsk?”).