Two pieces of news from the European Court:
Russia has, after all, appealed the ruling in the “Kirovles case,” which I won on February 23, 2016. At that time, the court found that the verdict was politically motivated and unjust, and therefore had to be overturned. Interestingly, the authorities quite literally jumped onto a departing train—another couple of days, and the ruling would have become final.
I think this indicates that the entire strategy is simply to delay the ruling from taking effect. As I have written many times before, it is important for the authorities that there be a formal ban on my participation in elections.
The case will now go to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR. It may agree to hear the appeal, which happens rather rarely, or it may refuse—in that case, the ruling will take effect immediately. There is no formal deadline, so we will simply have to wait.
Yesterday, I also received a letter saying that the case concerning 14 people arrested at the December 5, 2011 rally (the very one that marked the beginning of the 2011–2012 Moscow protests) has been communicated. Their cases have been joined together, and my case—already won in the ECHR—has been taken as the pilot judgment for them.
It turned out rather amusingly. I am acting as counsel in a case (the applications were prepared by Kostya Terekhov and me) in which, for the purposes of the pilot judgment, I appear as the applicant.
All the guys whose interests I represent (10 of the 14) were held with me at the time, either in the same cell or in neighboring ones. I am glad that justice will prevail for them as well, even if it has taken five years.
The same kind of rulings will sooner or later be handed down for all unlawful arrests, for the Bolotnaya defendants (people prosecuted over the Bolotnaya Square protest case), and for those kept in prison over pickets and social media posts. Of course, no ruling and no compensation can make up for months and years of life spent behind bars. Even so, these proceedings in the ECHR must be pursued so that, at the very least, they become the main basis for punishing those who imprisoned people without the slightest guilt.