about the Arakcheev and Khudyakov case. So I’ll write a few words about it to clarify my position. What really drives me up the wall is all this talk along the lines of: “what if they were Chechens? what if they were being tried by Chechens? what if Russians had been killed? what if he had been transporting ammunition? what if he had been transporting pasta?” There are no “what ifs.” I’m not deeply familiar with this case. I know a few facts: **- A and Kh are accused of murder; they have not admitted guilt; they were acquitted by a jury TWICE; despite that, for some reason they are now sitting in a cell awaiting a third trial; each time, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court overturned the acquittal after public outrage from Kadyrov and Alkhanov.** My position is very simple: questions of guilt are decided by the court. I absolutely reject statements like “anyone who spent even three minutes looking at the case understands that they’re guilty” (Ilya Barabanov barabanch or Mitya Olshansky olshansky). It may well be that to Ilya and everyone who agrees with him it is also perfectly obvious that Chubais is a crook; Veshnyakov rigs elections; Gazprom is siphoning off money; huge numbers of journalists are liars; Berezovsky is a thief; Khodorkovsky is a crook; Prokhorov sleeps with underage prostitutes; all political parties (including liberal ones) keep slush funds and commit tax crimes, and so on. SO WHAT? All of us living in Russia figure out all sorts of things in three minutes. But personally, when the question is whether or not to lock someone up for 20 years, I would like justice to come into play. Personally, I don’t like Berezovsky. But I’m against him being quietly bumped off in London. I would like to see him in the dock. And I’m also against the monkeys who cut off our soldiers’ heads being quietly blown up somewhere in the mountains. I want them tracked down and tried in public. Our judicial system is disgusting, corrupt, and works on orders from above. But there is one bright spot in it. Already badly defiled by the authorities, but still. That is the jury trial. THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE in our judicial system where the adversarial principle actually works. That is precisely why the acquittal rate there is so high. That is precisely why our authorities so often lose jury trials, or can win only through direct manipulation. And if those degenerate investigators were unable to “find evidence” and the jury acquitted A and Kh, then that is the fault of the prosecutor’s office and the Interior Ministry’s investigative bodies. And I will never agree that the jury system now has to be completely violated and discredited just to calm those for whom “it’s obvious enough that they’re murderers.” Especially for the liberals who turned out not to be liberals at all. My friends, why is it that you defend Pichugin? And Khodorkovsky? And the physicist Danilov? Personally, I am inclined to think that Pichugin really did organize a double murder. But there were so many violations in his trial (including the dissolution of the jury panel) that this makes it possible to regard him as a political prisoner. Pichugin may be a murderer. But that is not why he is in prison. HE IS IN PRISON BECAUSE PUTIN WANTS IT. The same goes for Khodor, the National Bolsheviks, and all these “spies.” But A and Kh may also be murderers, yet they will go to prison because “Hero of Russia A. Kadyrov arranged it with the right people.” So what I want to say is that screeching that Pichugin, Trepashkin, and Khodorkovsky are political prisoners, while Arakcheev and Khudyakov are monsters who must be kept in a cage, is POLITICAL WHORING. **Arakcheev has exactly the same right to a fair trial as Khodorkovsky, despite the fact that he did not provide significant financial support to “civil society and human rights organizations.” **I am glad that among representatives of the liberal movement there turned out to be people capable of remaining principled liberals on this issue as well, without being frightened by condemnation from various “well-known human rights activists.” On whether it is acceptable to attend a rally where there are so many “people of dubious reputation.” Well, if you want to achieve something, you have to deal with different kinds of people. And if you stand in a square with someone, that does not mean you share all of their views on every issue. I think that among the thousands who defended Shcherbinsky there were quite a few fascists, communists, Putin supporters, and advocates of union with China. So what now? Should Shcherbinsky not be defended? Should we wait until the support group consists only of “honest drivers unsullied by ties to…”? For me, this was my own rally. By coming to it, I expressed my own position on this issue. If tomorrow Surkov and Kasparov organize a march in defense of the institution of trial by jury, I’ll go to that too. cross-posted to ru_politics