Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Mad or Bad?
Russia's top prosecutor condemns a military court for its handling of a case against an army colonel accused of murder in Chechnya BY ILYA CHERNYSHEV/SAMARA
Friday, Jun. 28, 2002 In an unprecedented move, Russia's Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov has lambasted a court for its lax prosecution of a Russian army officer tried for the rape and murder of an 18-year-old Chechen woman. A decision is expected in early July, after a final statement by the defense.
Ustinov said on Thursday that the three-year sentence that the prosecutor called for was too light, echoing complaints by the victim's family that the prosecutor had "acted like a brilliant defense attorney." He also criticized the handling of psychiatric evidence that the defense has used to argue that the colonel was insane when he kidnapped, raped, and strangled Elza Kungayeva in March 2000.
Colonel Yuri Budanov, a tank commander, confessed to raping the 18-year-old after he was arrested by military police, and a forensic examination subsequently corroborated his words. Budanov said that he had had taken Kungayeva to a military base, where, during an hour-long interrogation, he had strangled her in a fit of rage, thinking that she was a rebel sniper. The next morning he ordered some of his troops to bury Kungayeva. He was also charged with kidnapping Kungayeva and assaulting a subordinate who had refused to open fire on the village in which Kungayeva was subsequently captured.
An initial psychiatric examination indicated that Budanov had been in full command of his senses. However, Budanov then told the court that he had been suffering from anoesis, a sub-psychotic state typified by delirium and hallucinations. A second examination ruled that he had been suffering from acute psychosis. In his summation on 18 June, Prosecutor Sergei Nazarov called on the court to drop the murder charge against Budanov, to send him to prison for three years on the lesser charges of abduction and assaulting a subordinate, and then to release him under an amnesty that entitles decorated military servicemen to walk free if they are sentenced to three years or less.
The defense had also called on the jury to consider Budanov's war record and his conscientious efforts to restore constitutional order in Chechnya. It also argued that it is not easy to tell a peaceful Chechen resident from a rebel, and that Kungayeva was "nothing more than a combat statistic."
However, on 20 June, Ustinov declared that he was "inclined to disagree with the conclusions of the second forensic analysis that declared Budanov insane at the time of the murder.' It was, he argued, incomprehensible that a second examination was even called for. Nor, he said, did he agree with the prosecution's call for the murder charge to be dropped.
His criticism recalls doubts expressed by medical experts. In a recent interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Yuri Savenko, president of Independent Association of Russian Psychiatrists, said that in a state of anoesis or psychosis Budanov would not, for example, have then been able to clear up the traces of the murder as rationally as he did.
Others have also questioned the psychiatric evidence because of the history of the institute that conducted the second tests, the Serbsky Institute. Experts at the institute were responsible for the confinement of numerous communist-era dissidents on the grounds of insanity. The doctor who diagnosed Budanov had also labeled as schizophrenic a vocal critic of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Natalya Gorbanevskaya. Gorbanevskaya then spent three years in a psychiatric hospital.
How much practical impact Ustinov's words will have is unclear, though news site grani.ru has indicated that Ustinov's office may appeal if Budanov is released. Despite the threat, the expectation in the Russian media is that Budanov will walk free in early July. He will not have to walk for long: The ultra-nationalist Russian National Unity (RNE) organization has bought him a car as a present, some reports indicate. The Prosecutor General's Office will then have seven days to appeal the verdict.
If he is brought back to trial, Budanov cannot be sent back to prison, as he has already spent two years behind bars, longer than the law allows for pre-trial detentions. Gazeta.ru has therefore suggested that Ustinov had made a brilliant propaganda move, disarming human-rights criticisms of the judicial system but nonetheless enabling Budanov to be acquitted. Because of the controversy, Budanov has been offered protection if he were to be released. He has refused, however, saying he does not need protection.
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