Politically-motivated abuses of the criminal justice system

August 7, 2009

Excerpts from the report, pub­lished by the Com­mit­tee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights on alle­ga­tions of polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed abus­es of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in Coun­cil of Europe mem­ber states with rec­om­men­da­tions on series of steps to strength­en the inde­pen­dence of judges and pros­e­cu­tors across Europe to end polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed inter­fer­ence in indi­vid­ual cases.

Inter alia the Com­mit­tee calls for a series of reforms to reduce the polit­i­cal and hier­ar­chi­cal pres­sures on judges and put an end to the harass­ment of defence lawyers in order to com­bat “legal nihilism” in the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, as a pre­con­di­tion also for suc­cess­ful co-oper­a­tion between Russ­ian and oth­er Euro­pean law enforce­ment authorities.

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Keeping politics out of the law

June 23, 2009

A report approved today by the Legal Affairs Com­mit­tee of the Coun­cil of Europe Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly (PACE) has rec­om­mend­ed a series of steps to boost the inde­pen­dence of judges across Europe to end what it calls “polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed inter­fer­ence” in indi­vid­ual cases.

The report, pre­pared by Sabine Leutheuss­er-Schnar­ren­berg­er (Ger­many, ALDE), expos­es ways that politi­cians can med­dle with the law in four coun­tries rep­re­sent­ing the prin­ci­pal types of crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in Europe, analysing high-pro­file cas­es such as the drop­ping of the BAE fraud inves­ti­ga­tion and “cash for hon­ours” scan­dal in the Unit­ed King­dom, or the sec­ond Khodor­kovsky tri­al, HSBC/Hermitage Cap­i­tal case and Politkovskaya inves­ti­ga­tion in Russia.

Among oth­er things, the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans call for:

• in Rus­sia, a series of reforms to reduce the polit­i­cal pres­sures on judges and end the harass­ment of defence lawyers in order to com­bat “legal nihilism” in Russia.

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