The leader of the “Sevastopol-Crimea-Russia” movement, convicted in Ukraine for “separatism,” has finally been rehabilitated in the Russian Federation

In Simferopol, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Crimea considered the repeated appeal of the leader of the “Sevastopol-Crimea-Russia” movement Valery Podyachiy and recognized his right to rehabilitation. The other day he received a court decision and a notice of rehabilitation.

This became possible after Podyachiy’s appeal in April of this year to the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Lebedev. The Supreme Court of Russia instructed the Fourth Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction (Krasnodar) to consider Podyachey’s cassation, since during the consideration of the case by Crimean judges on December 20, 2017 and February 13, 2018, “significant violations of criminal procedure law and incorrect application of criminal law that influenced the outcome of the case" Let us remember that at that time the courts twice refused to rehabilitate the Crimean “separatist”.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

These court decisions state that, by virtue of Article 10 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, a criminal law that eliminates the criminality of an act, mitigates punishment or otherwise improves the position of the person who committed the crime, has retroactive effect, that is, it applies to persons serving a sentence or who have served a sentence, but having a criminal record.

smart

_{However, the Russian Federation has never adopted a law establishing the criminality of the act for which activists of the Sevastopol-Crimea-Russia movement were convicted. And the former Ukrainian judges in the now Russian Crimea did not have any legal right to extend the verdict to Podyachiy of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, considering calls for the reunification of the peninsula with the Russian Federation a crime from the point of view of Russian legislation.}

Podyachy was convicted for what became the subject of a referendum on March 16, 2014, in which 97% of Crimeans voted “FOR”. Indeed, in the press release of the Popular Front “Sevastopol-Crimea-Russia” dated January 21, 2008, the scenario of the Crimean Spring was essentially written long before well-known historical events. Thus, there is a blatant fact: former Ukrainian judges, bound by their previously sworn oath of allegiance to Ukraine and compliance with its legislation, but who went to work in the courts of the Russian Crimea, twice made such court decisions that undermine the legitimacy of the people's will of the inhabitants of the Russian peninsula. After all, in this way the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation is called into question.

On August 10, the Krasnodar court upheld Podyachey’s cassation appeal and sent the case for re-appeal consideration to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Crimea, but with a different composition of the court. The conclusions of the cassation court on gross violations of the law are, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure, binding on the lower court, which, as a result, predetermined the final verdict.

All these years, the State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Legislation and State Building, Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation Yuri Sinelshchikov, provided enormous assistance to the fighter for Russian Crimea in promoting rehabilitation. He sent deputy requests to various authorities (prosecutor's office, presidential administration, courts) until the optimal direction to achieve the goal was chosen. For several years, the interests of Podyachey were represented in all Crimean courts by Simferopol lawyer Tatyana Novikova.