#6596
#7
Moscow Times
December 10, 2002
Zakayev Out of the Game
By Boris Kagarlitsky
It is no great surprise that Akhmed Zakayev is free. The Russian authorities had little evidence to send to Denmark, and it seems they had low expectations of him ever being extradited.
Russian officials first accused the Chechen politician of being a "terrorist" but later changed the charges to participation in "armed insurrection" and in an "unauthorized armed formation" (as the Russian government now calls the armed forces of the Chechen republic). The problem is that every Chechen who defended his homeland after federal troops invaded in 1994 can be accused of insurrection.
In fact, no insurrection happened during that period: The republic was de facto independent from 1991 to 1994 and when federal troops invaded the territory, it already had its own military forces, police and even a Culture Ministry headed by Zakayev.
To make things worse, the State Duma passed an amnesty in March 1997 pardoning combatants on both sides in the Chechen war of 1994-96. This was not so much a gesture of goodwill on the part of the federal authorities as a measure to prevent the prosecution of war criminals among Russian generals.
However, after 1999, the federal authorities somehow forgot about their obligations and started putting people who were covered by the amnesty in jail. And naturally, Russian generals developed their own criteria: They decided that any Chechen male over the age of 12 was a potential terrorist. That is the official policy of the federal army's top brass, and it has never been denounced or criticized by federal officials. From this point of view, Zakayev can clearly be considered a terrorist.
However, that didn't prevent him from having a meeting with presidential envoy Viktor Kazantsev in Moscow last year, when President Vladimir Putin was exploring the possibility of a political solution.
In any case, it was clear from the very beginning that what was good enough for Russian prosecutors was insufficient for a Danish court. After the release of Zakayev, many politicians in Moscow focused their criticism on the Prosecutor General's Office for its handling of the case. But the prosecutor's office did the best it could. It seems that they received the order to investigate Zakayev only after he was arrested. And it is extremely hard to collect evidence, which doesn't exist or to investigate crimes that were never committed. This must have been pretty clear from the start both for the prosecutor's office and for those in the Kremlin who launched the campaign against Zakayev.
It is symptomatic that the official reaction in Moscow was much milder than might have been expected given the uproar over Denmark's refusal to ban the World Chechen Congress in Copenhagen in October. It is pretty clear that what happened was exactly what was expected. But in that case, why was it necessary to open the case in the first place? Of course, there are always good grounds to suspect that some bureaucrats simply wanted to please their bosses and went a bit too far -- the main thing being to show effort and enthusiasm, not to get results.
However, there is another explanation, which is that the authorities had no intention of putting Zakayev on trial. What they wanted was to delegitimize him as a potential partner in the peace process and make it impossible for Russian politicians and bureaucrats to establish contact with him in the foreseeable future.
If that's the case, the policy worked: The last political figure who was considered to be an acceptable negotiating partner by Moscow has now been taken out of the game.
It is telling that soon after Zakayev's release, the Prosecutor General's Office informed the press that it was not going to file a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights against the ruling of the Danish authorities in the near future for their refusal to extradite him. The prosecutor's office knows full well that it would be a waste of time -- and more humiliation is not what they need.
Similarly, regarding current attempts to extradite Zakayev from Britain, there have been some angry words from Russian officials, but little more than that.
The real political aim has already been achieved. And as often happens, international politics has been subordinated to domestic concerns. As for the prosecutor's office, it simply carried the can for decisions made elsewhere.
Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
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