- A top European representative arrived in Moscow to act
as an impartial observer of this week's trial of Russia's richest man,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who founded the country's top oil producer Yukos.
- click for origin
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- David Irving comments:
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- I once went on a tour of Germany with film star Michael
Crawford; we were promoting a film called Oh, What A Wonderful War, in
which he starred.
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- We started on a stage in Munich, and ended in a sleazy
club in Hamburg's red-light Reeperbahn; on the way around the country,
I took Michael through Checkpoint Charlie to have a look at the "socialist
achievements" of East Berlin.
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- I mention this apparently irrelevant fact, because
the tour opened my eyes to the wealth of the public relations industry.
I was surprised at Hamburg airport when our plane was surrounded by hordes
of screaming teenagers carrying pictures of Michael (and none of myself).
Money can buy anything.
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- They were there again, outside the courthouse in London
in April 2000, reaady to jeer and throw things. And here they are again,
the screaming Rentamob of fans and enthusiasts, this time protesting Khodorkovsky's
innocence with all the vehemence and integrity of the expert witnesses
hired by Deborah Lipstadt's friends -- who probably come from the same,
ahem, corner as these protestors.
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- They cannot possibly know anything of the complexities
of the billionaire's case, and whether or not he was right to swindle the
heirs of the old Soviet Union out of billions of dollars in real money
(not the near- worthless rubles that they paid me when I discovered they
had been printing millions of copies of my books in the 1970s.) But there
they are, protesting.
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- Yes, it is a rum old world, and we are privileged
to be living through it.
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- When I was a steelworker in 1960, I was required to pass
within two months, two new examinations at "A" level to qualify
for entry to University College, London: Economics, and British Constitution;
starting from scratch, it seemed an impossible task, but I had the textbooks
sent to the dormitory at the Thyssen Works, and I read them up and added
in some of my own commonsense and I eventually passed with distinction,
which might be taken to show what a low standard was then required.
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- In the latter exam, a question asked about the merits
of the British constitution, and I said that the absence of a British Ministry
of Justice was the greatest, as it was the mark of the dictatorship: it
bound the judiciary to the state in a wholly unhealthy way.
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- Just think of every such minister produced by the
Nazi and Communist regimes.
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- Which brings me to the "European representative"
whose moniker is touted in this article, the ineffably named German ex
minister of justice Sabine Leutheusser- Schnarrenberger. Jeez, if I had
a name like hers I would change it several times, just in case somebody
asked me what it was before.
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- Her name rings a bell in my memory, and with a name
like that it has to be a pretty hefty bronze thing, big enough to put the
cracked one in Philadelphia to shame.
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- And I know what the clapper was: As "federal
minister of justice" in the early 1990s in "the most freedom
loving and democratic Germany there has ever been" as they used to
call themselves, she was the minister who required the instant resignation
on "sick leave" of the three judges at state (Land) level who
perversely found that my friend G'nter Deckert was innocent of the charges
leveled against him under Germany's laws for the suppression of free speech.
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- One of these three Landesrichter, Orlet, recklessly
described Deckert as a fine example of an upstanding German citizen, a
former schoolteacher who had only the interests of his own nation at heart
(that was a nasty dig at Bonn).
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- As said, on Sabine L-S's orders all three judges were
forcibly retired, and Deckert eventually served seven years in a German
jail for having chaired a 1990 lecture in Weinheim at which I spoke. In
the words of a later, more subservient, judge, Deckert "ought to have
known that Mr Irving might speak certain words, even if he did not actually
do so."
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- Yes, I am sure the PR people and fans of of billionaire
financier Michael Khodorkovsky knew what they were doing when they hired
Sabine Leutheusser- Schnarrenberger. She appears to have been on a retainer
to them for some time.
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- But she was immediately barred access from Mikhail Khodorkovsky
amid cries of outrage from the defense team for Russia's richest man and
President Vladimir Putin political opponent.
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- Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger
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- Sabine Leutheusser- Schnarrenberger, a former German
justice minister, above, said she had not yet been granted permission to
meet Khodorkovsky or to attend the trial as her mission -- which has large
diplomatic significance -- looked in peril. Khodorkovsky was arrested by
masked security men on October 25 in his private jet while traveling in
Siberia after allegedly ignoring a summons from prosecutors.
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- He has been charged with massive fraud and tax evasion
but some Western governments view the case as a political trial and an
attempt by Kremlin hawks to win control over the lucrative oil industry.
"I want to meet the defendants," Leutheusser- Schnarrenberger
said on arrival in remarks broadcast on NTV television, adding that she
planned to meet justice and general prosecutor's office officials on Tuesday.
"I need to see the situation in the detention facilities," she
added.
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- However the Interfax new agency cited a court representative
as saying that Leutheusser- Schnarrenberger would not be allowed to meet
Khodorkovsky because that would break Russian law. He gave no other details.
A spokesman for Leutheusser- Schnarrenberger said he was aware of the report
and had no official confirmation of it from Russian authorities. "We
have not had either a yes or a no. We expect to be officially told tomorrow,"
Gunter Schirmer said by telephone.
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- Khodorkovsky's lawyer also said the chances of Leutheusser-
Schnarrenberger meeting her client looked slim. "I am sorry that things
are turning out the way they are," Karina Moskalenko told Moscow Echo
radio. "She should have been allowed to see him ... as an independent
observer."
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- Khodorkovsky's supporters say the oil tycoon was targeted
for prosecution because he financed parties opposed to Putin ahead of the
December parliamentary and March presidential elections. He was estimated
to be worth 15.2 billion dollars by Forbes magazine this year.
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- Khodorkovsky, who made his billions in the economic mayhem
of the first years of post-Soviet rule, had begun to openly challenge the
Kremlin. Among other things, he fought the Kremlin over its plans to raise
taxes on Russia's oil companies, plans which the Russian authorities now
intend to pursue.
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- KhodorskyNow awaiting trial in the Matrosskaya Tishina
jail in Moscow, Khodorkovsky will be tried on seven counts of fraud, tax
evasion and embezzlement, facing up to 10 years in jail if convicted. Preliminary
hearings are set to open on Friday in one of the most closely-observed
hearings to be staged in post- Soviet Russia.
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- Leutheusser- Schnarrenberger was appointed by the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on March 15 to monitor Khodorkovsky's
case. She has been instructed to make five fact-finding missions to Moscow
and meet Khodorkovsky and other Yukos officials who are also on trial,
including its number two shareholder Platon Lebedev.
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- Leutheusser- Schnarrenberger had planned to visit Moscow
earlier, as the Yukos scandal unfolded, but Russian authorities postponed
that trip "with two days' notice", according to a statement from
APEC, a consultancy firm employed by Yukos. Western-based attorneys for
Khodorkovsky have also been denied entry visas by Russian authorities at
the last minute, and access to the court hearings.
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- View this thread on the web at
- http://www.libertyforum.org/showthreaded.php?Bo
ard=news_crime&Number=1481775
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