On 31 July, the Supreme Court of Crimea sentenced a resident of the Bakhchisaray district to 15 years’ imprisonment on charges of treason, followed by one year of restricted liberty. The convicted woman’s identity has not been disclosed; however, her year of birth and a number of other circumstances suggest that she is Viktoria Sergeeva, who was abducted last summer at Sochi airport whilst passing through passport control after arriving from Turkey.
According to a statement from the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office, the court found that, between April and October 2022, the woman transferred more than 23,000 roubles to a bank account set up to raise funds for the Ukrainian armed forces. “The defendant was aware that the money would be used to oppose and harm the armed forces of the Russian Federation.” According to Russian human rights activists, security forces gained access to Sergeyeva’s mobile phone when she returned to Russia from Turkey. At Sochi Airport, FSB officers demanded to see her Ukrainian passport and noticed stamps indicating visits to Ukraine, after which they began examining her mobile phone. The security forces forced Sergeeva to reveal the passwords to her banking apps, after which they showed her several money transfers, claiming that they had been sent to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Sergeeva was subsequently subjected to ‘carousel arrests’ and unlawfully detained without a court order at the Borisoglebsk remand centre. Following torture and pressure, she confessed to the charges, but later retracted her confession, insisting that she had not made any money transfers since 2021.
The trial was conducted in breach of the requirements regarding access to justice. For instance, no information about the defendant or the other parties to the case is available on the court’s official website. All eight court hearings were held in camera on the pretext that the case file contained state secrets. A breach of the standard of access to fair justice was also noted, as this standard requires the verdict to be pronounced openly and publicly — yet the verdict in this case was delivered in camera.
Furthermore, the impartiality and independence of the presiding judge are subject to reasonable doubt, as the verdict was delivered by Judge Viktor Zinkov, who is wanted by the authorities because he himself is a defendant in a criminal case in Ukraine on charges of treason. In view of this circumstance, he cannot be regarded as impartial and objective, particularly in cases where Crimean residents are accused of financing Ukrainian military units.
Furthermore, Viktor Zinkov has a reputation as a biased and corrupt judge who has repeatedly assisted the FSB in the handling of politically motivated cases. In particular, he presided over the panel of judges during the trial of Akhtem Chiygoz, Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis, and even then committed numerous procedural violations. In 2021, he also presided over the panel in the ‘gas pipeline sabotage’ trial, which was marked by numerous breaches of procedural rules and judicial ethics. The judge ignored repeated allegations of torture and abductions of defendants and witnesses, failed to respond in any way to the boorish behaviour of FSB officers in court, and even prompted them with the correct answers whilst they were being cross-examined by the defence. The most striking example of this connivance was the judge’s consent to the presence of an FSB investigator—who had not been summoned—during the cross-examination of another witness (an FSB operative), which allowed the investigator to clarify his position before giving evidence.
An indirect indication of the court’s bias and a pre-determined verdict is the length of time spent in the deliberation room. The court retired to deliberate in the afternoon and spent no more than 21 hours there, 15 of which fell during the night and outside working hours. It seems doubtful that the court could have carried out a comprehensive and objective assessment of all the circumstances of a case involving a particularly serious offence within such a short period of time. Furthermore, the timing of the publication of the verdict on the prosecution service’s information platforms may indicate that the decision had been prepared in advance. A news report detailing the verdict appeared 12 minutes after the court’s verdict had been read out.
An equally important aspect of the persecution is the information campaign in the Crimean and major Russian media, which showed signs of presenting the verdict in a one-sided manner from the prosecution’s perspective. At least seven publications have been identified in local and federal media outlets, all identical in content, which present information based solely on a statement from the prosecution, representing the prosecution’s case. The position of the defence and the defendant is absent from these reports. There is also no mention of any attempts to obtain such information from them.
Photo: Viktoria Sergeeva, author of ‘First Department’