Monday, 1 December

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11.30 am    Murad Musayev, lawyer for Djabrail Makhmudov, asked the presiding judge Yevgeny Zubov to consider the interview given by Petros Garibyan, senior investigator at the Investigative Committee, in October this year to Novaya gazeta (see # 74 for English version). Musayev read out the investigator’s words, which were in his opinion an attempt to influence the jurors:

“If this interview is read by the future jury, I would ask them: please listen attentively to the prosecution and the defence, weigh the facts, and do not take sides. You must do your job properly, if you’ve agreed to do it. Someone has been murdered, a well-known journalist, a woman! Don’t let anyone manipulate you. I hope the jury will give us their unbiased verdict. I am not saying they must convict the accused, I’m requesting that their verdict be ‘unbiased’.”      

“I do not wish to comment on what Garibyan said, he is not taking part in this trial,” said Judge Zubov, noting that Musayev’s statement had been entered into the record.

The judge then addressed the press:

“I have just read certain publications. In some cases everything said by Vera and Ilya Politkovsky was quoted. In other cases only part of their statement was given. Well now, that’s for journalists to decide. However, I would ask you (as a request, naturally), not to quote the entire statement of a witness or to give their names.”

According to Zubov, publication of the names of witnesses in the media might have certain rather bad consequences. Each witness would know what his predecessor had said, the judge suggested, and might change something in his or her testimony. Again he emphasised that these were no more than his suppositions and words of advice, and if journalists wanted to reveal one name or another they were entitled to do so.

The judge also offered words of advice to the jury. Zubov asked them not to pay attention to the way that one and the same facts might be differently interpreted in the media.