The Words of the Drenicheva Family
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The Words of the Drenicheva Family |
On March 10, 2009 Almaty City Court held a hearing on the appeal on Elizaveta Drenicheva’s criminal case. She had been incarcerated for 2 years on January 9 by the Decision of Almaty District Court found guilty while doing a missionary activity of Unification Church in intentional propaganda of strife between tribes and strata of Kazakhstan people.
The board of 3 Judges of the City Court was composed of Mr. Beymbetov, Mr. Makhpirov and chaired by Mrs. K. S. Bukhbanova. The other participants of the hearing were Mr. Berikhan Idrisov the lawyer of Elizaveta Drenicheva and Mrs. S. Kobzhanova the Assistant of the City Prosecutor. Among the audience were the representative of OSCE, US Embassy, Human Rights Committee and Radio Liberty.
Elizaveta Drenicheva was not brought to the court and Mr. Idrisov’s motion to have the hearing in her presence was declined by the court. During the hearing Elizaveta was staying in prison located a few blocks away in the same city not informed of the content of the deliberations at the hearing.
Another solicitation of the lawyer to interrogate Mr. Konstantin Krylov as a witness from the Unification Church of Russia was also declined by the court as unnecessary.
The hearing continued by Mr. Idrisov the lawyer who spoke the appeal. He spoke about an unprecedented significance of the case, because the issue at stake was a potential “danger” of any religious beliefs in the nation. He also enumerated the expert opinions of prominent scholars Dr. Gordon Melton and Jim Richardson from USA and Dr. Elbakyan from Russia who possessed far higher academic merits than Mrs. Burova’s whose expert opinion on the case was used by Kazakhstan Security Service as a many punitive evidence in the case. The statements of the three scholars and the other support material were applied to the court prior to the hearing, Mr. Idrisov also reminded the court that the witnesses whose testimonies were the evidence in the lower court were actually not independent but intentionally brought by Kazakhstan Security Service to Unification Church facility to listen to Elizaveta’s lectures. Moreover their statements were contradictory. Mr. Idrisov finished his speech by reminding that court that the day of the hearing was March 10 a religious holiday for the people of Jewish faith to commemorate the role of women and need for forgiveness. The lawyer appealed to fully justify Elizaveta Drenicheva and free her immediately.
While speaking the lawyer was interrupted by the judge to shorten his speech and not to speak unnecessary details because those were already filed and studied by the judges previously.
The prosecutor was the second to speak. She stressed that the sentence of the lower court was correct in essence. The prosecutor stressed that the evidence and expert opinions were correct. Elizaveta’s activities were harmful and her lectures were dangerous. Nevertheless, her age and absence of criminal record in the past allow the court to ease the punishment. The prosecutor requested to change the 2 years incarceration term to 3 years of the probation conditional imprisonment. After hearing the prosecutor the judge dismissed the hearing.
The lawyer noted that whereas normally the appeals court makes decisions almost instantaneously, this time it took about 40 minutes for the court to come to the conclusion. The audience were summoned again and the court announced the following. The appeal was satisfied partly. Elizaveta Drenicheva is found guilty on all points and the sentence does not change in this respect. The court decision reads that Elizaveta Drenicheva’s lectures on the Principle of Creation, the Fall, the Purpose of the Messiah were a public propaganda of inferiority of Kazakhstan citizens same as were her statements on ideal and true family, salvation and perfection. The court further accepted the fact that Elizaveta Drenicheva’s punishment was too strong. Since she was young, never committed a crime before and was positively characterized, she “could be corrected without being isolated from the society”. The court made a decision to free Elizaveta Drenicheva immediately. The court also stated that she should be fined 200 USD. Nevertheless, since she already spent 2 months and 3 days in prison, this time can be considered equivalent to paying this fine.
The court finished. We gave interviews in the corridor of the court to Radio Liberty commenting that “Most important is that Elizaveta Drenicheva is to be freed. This decision is already an important step forward”. We refrained from any critique.
It is a law that prisoners should be freed immediately on such court rulings. Surprisingly, the court wrote a wrong paper to prison and the prison refused to let Elizaveta out on the same day. Despite our pressure to court executives, the documents were not fixed quickly. Elizaveta stayed in prison another night on March 10. This made us also cancel the press-conference scheduled for March 11 since Elizaveta stayed “hostage” of the situation. Next day, we received the corrected court decision and delivered to the prison in the morning. Mr. Idrisov the lawyer privately told us that when he came to the judge with a protest against Elizaveta’s not being freed immediately, the judge told him “Your speech in the court was too long today. If you spoke shorter, you could have the document on time. Otherwise, you can wait 3 more days”.