Moscow lawyers support Mikhail Trepashkin

The Legal Council of Moscow has expressed a decisive protest in connection with violations of citizens' rights in Russia to the director of the Federal Corrections Service in Russia, Yuri Kalinin in a document published on March 5 by the Public Committee in Defense of Mikhail Trepashkin and the All-Russian movement "For Human Rights ".

The document noted in particular: "Trepashkin was sentenced in May 2005 on the doubtful charge of the storage and transportation of ammunition (one cartridge!) and the divulging of state secrets (communicating the surname of a KGB agent to his former chief in the FSB).

This is a man who has a perfectly clean record, was as a Colonel of the FSB, has received awards from the government, is a father of five, and suffers severe chronic illness. Has been sentenced to 4 years of deprivation of freedom and sent to serve his sentence more than thousands of kilometers from Moscow, in a very polluted region.

In August 2005, the Tagilstroyevsky District Court in Lower Tagil, in complete accordance with the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. released Trepashkin. However, this attempt at independence by the judicial authorities was suppressed. On September18, 2005, the FSB took Trepashkin from his apartment in Moscow, where he had returned after his release, and forcibly returned him to the prison colony. The legal and valid decision of the court was abolished by a higher authority.

At present, Trepashkin is serving his sentence in a prison colony, situated in Lower Tagil. He suffers bronchial asthma. His condition is serious, with periodic cessations of respiration. Trepashkin needs regular doctor's examinations to refine the diagnosis and definition of the degree of respiratory insufficiency, in order to determine proper treatment and alternate possibilities for serving his punishment. However, the numerous pleas of international and domestic public organizations have been persistently ignored by the management of the penal colony, who have disregarded even the petition of members of the Parliament of the Russian Federation, Rezink and Lukin, about hospitalizing Trepashkin. Moreover, this seriously ill asthmatic has been portrayed as a malicious disturber of the prison regime and they are attempting to aggravate his punishment by transferring him from the penal colony setting to a general regime prison.

All these events cannot be seen as anything other than objectionable. Measures must be taken immediately to end the violation of his constitutional human right to the protection of health and to ensure that Trepashkin is examined by independent pulmonary specialists ".