In December 2013, a message was published on the Rossiyskaya Gazeta website about an amnesty for a wide range of people. In the same month, the whole country celebrated the Constitution Day of the Russian Federation 2013. An amnesty, dedicated to this significant event, was to be realized immediately after the publication of the document. The bill was submitted by the President of the Russian Federation for discussion by the State Duma.
Who was affected by the amnesty
The essence of the amnesty is to pardon a number of people who, for some reason, have the right to be released from custody. However, people who were impatiently awaiting the publication of the draft amnesty were unpleasantly surprised to learn that the text of the document contained many ambiguities and limitations, because of which not all hopes would be justified.
In fact, the categories of the population that were to fall under the amnesty were quite numerous. The first group of pardons includes persons sentenced to less than five years, but who have not yet served their sentences in correctional institutions. This provision of the document extended to mothers of minor children, pregnant women, men over the age of sixty, and women over the age of fifty-five, citizens who were victims of the disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, disabled people of the first and second groups, as well as military personnel and any other persons who took part in hostilities.
According to the amnesty draft, the charges will be dropped from those who were not sentenced to imprisonment, conditionally convicted or prematurely released persons. Fortune smiled on those criminals whose sentences were delayed or mitigated. Amnesties were to be and citizens who committed offenses as minors. Among other things, an amnesty was promised to be announced for people convicted of such articles as hooliganism, traffic violations and riots.
The "broad" amnesty also affected individuals whose criminal cases were still at the stage of investigation or trial. All such cases, as well as charges under articles, the punishment of which is no more than five years, were canceled. This rule also applied to minors and the accused under the first part of article 264 of the Criminal Code (for violation of traffic rules). The abovementioned military and pregnant women were included in this circle of persons.
Articles that do not fall under the amnesty
For convicts in more than a hundred articles, an amnesty is not expected. Those sentenced for murder, causing serious or moderate bodily harm will remain in places of deprivation of liberty. For a series of articles on sexual violence, fraud, major robberies and robberies, an amnesty was also not provided.
Amnesty by the day of the Constitution of the Russian Federation did not concern the so-called "economic" criminals convicted of acts prescribed from article 169 to 200. The first persons of the state explain this decision by the fact that the amnesty for economic crimes has already taken place earlier. Then, in 2013, more than 1,400 people were released. However, citizens whose crimes constituted a threat to public safety, such as terrorists, should not have been released from prison.
Effective Dates
The project was developed by the Presidential Human Rights Council. On December 9 of last year, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin submitted the initial version of the document for further consideration. Pavel Krasheninnikov, chairman of the State Duma committee responsible for criminal lawmaking, said that most likely the bill could be discussed and approved no earlier than December 17. The text of the document says that the amnesty period extends to the next six months after the official decision is published.
Amnesty acceptance and initial public reaction
When the official website of the President of the Russian Federation posted news about the upcoming amnesty, a note explaining some of the provisions of the project was attached to this message. It follows from the note that the amnesty on the day of the Constitution of Russia extends to a limited circle of people who are called the least socially protected. In other words, special categories of the population promised pardon: some convicted, accused, suspected and under investigation, as well as citizens who were noted for special merits to their homeland.
The deputy speaker of the State Duma, a representative of the United Russia faction, Vladimir Vasiliev, told news agencies that about twenty-five thousand people would be affected by the amnesty for prisoners. According to the deputies, they found the text of the decision on Tuesday morning in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Nevertheless, the necessary information did not appear on the State Duma website or on the Kremlin’s network resources. It was known for sure that the president was going to "have mercy" on a much wider circle of persons than was said in the explanatory note. One way or another, the public from the very beginning met the news of amnesty with heated and controversial discussion.
Unfortunate third point
The third paragraph turned out to be the most interesting in the draft resolution; it says about amnesty for categories of not only “beneficiaries”, but also for those already convicted. The articles referred to in the third paragraph of the decision have already been mentioned above. This is hooliganism, a violation of traffic rules that did not result in death, as well as the participation or organization of mass riots.
In this regard, I recall the meeting of the president with Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the HRC. Then Vladimir Vladimirovich commented on the various features of the jubilee amnesty, saying that it can only apply to people who actually did not commit serious crimes, did not commit any violent actions against government officials. According to the government, there is no good reason to release socially dangerous individuals.
The Human Rights Council has been working on the text for about three months. During this time, council members insisted on expanding the circle of amnesties. Initially, the discussion narrowed the circle of those released only to "criminals." However, at the very last moment V.V. Putin somewhat changed his position and introduced the same third paragraph in the draft resolution, which implied amnesty for political criminals as well.
Erroneous or incorrect reading should be immediately excluded, because the document was endorsed by the state legal administration of the president. He was also assured by the first deputy head of the administration, it is likely that the head himself. Therefore, the publication of the note before entering the main text is explained by some confusion and insufficient preparation for such a course of events in the presidential apparatus and the structures coordinating with it. Confirmation of this hypothesis can be an unusual style in which the third paragraph is framed. The legal component is significantly different from that which can be traced in the remaining parts of the document. In the following paragraphs, there was no mention that the amnesty on the day of the Constitution should affect those whose cases are only being considered, which in practice is an exceptional case.
There was still the possibility that the third paragraph would eventually be deleted from the decision. But such a statement of the question would certainly cause a stir and provoke a public scandal that blew up all sections of the population. That is why not only criminals were pardoned in the final “final” version.
Amnesty for the "stars"
It is no secret that the amnesty of prisoners is not just "entered the masses." She became a symbol of the struggle for freedom for political prisoners, a struggle waged by liberal activists and representatives of independent media for a long time.
The phenomenon, nicknamed by the people "Putin's arbitrariness" and consisting in mass accusations of persons conducting opposition anti-government activities, may not have existed at all, it was fictitious and far-fetched. Indeed, the amnesty of 2013-2014 clearly shows that the government is capable of dialogue with the population. Despite the fact that opinions on the reasons for such a sudden mercy were divided, the fact that the amnesty was carried out surprisingly on time, as they say, "for the wickedness of the day," is incontrovertible. Those whose release under the amnesty seemed an impossible dream came out of custody: feminists from Pussy Riot, activists of Greenpeace, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, part of the persons involved in Bolotnaya Delo. The charges were also dropped from Anatoly Serdyukov.
Even during the amendment, lawyers noted a sea of opportunities to remove all punishments from their wards. So, Mikhail Kreindlin, who defended the rights of the Arctic Sunrise crew, explained that the amendments adopted in the second reading predetermined the release of a certain circle of people, for example, those convicted under article for hooliganism. They were just curious "Greenpeace". The amendment was adopted and yet included in the document in the third reading. That is why 30 Greenpeace activists along with crew members were amnestied long before the trial.
As far as everyone knows, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina were under investigation and were sentenced under the same article. The bill was enforced against the girls, and they managed to return home a few months before the deadline.
It should be noted that amnesty was not provided for all “swamps”. Only ten defendants under the article for the riots were to be released from correctional institutions, and only ten were officially dropped from all charges. The State Duma Committee on Procedural, Criminal, Civil, and Arbitration Legislations resolutely rejected the amendment on amnesty for persons accused of using violence against government representatives and organizing mass riots. In the absence of such a clause, 17 activists of Bolotnaya Delo were not pardoned.
The list of citizens for whom an amnesty has not been announced is wide enough. Many cases received a wide public outcry. Vladimir Akimenkov, Maria Baronova, Artem Savelov, Dmitry Rukavishnikov, Nikolai Kavkazsky, Fedor Bakhov, Leonid Kovin, Anastasia Rybachenko, Oleg Arkhipenkov, Stepan Zimin, Maxim Luzyanin, Alexandra Dukhanina, Yaroslav Belousov, Denis Lutskevich, Alexander Margolip, Alexey Polikhovich, Andrey , Sergey Krivov, Ilya Gushchin, Richard Sobolev, Alexey Gaskarov, Mikhail Kosenko, Konstantin Lebedev and Sergey Udaltsov should not and will not be amnestied.
A challenge to civil society, or Amnesty for the "Cause 12"
The amnesty project was called by many a real challenge to civil society. To become objects of amnesty, prisoners must be left without protection. The published decree caused a flurry of indignation among lawyers and other legal entities. Half the trouble turned out to be that freedom was not granted at all to the broad masses to which it was promised, but to a much smaller part of the population. A much more serious problem was the hardware-legal technique, which was performed so masterfully that the law left a lot of paradoxes, traps and duality.
First of all, only those who refused to defend their rights would be able to get a chance. Indeed, in the conditions of the Russian office work, the legal defense of the accused and the defendants takes enough time, and the amnesty is limited to six months. All potential criminals sentenced to imprisonment had to make a choice: either forget about professional protection altogether, or hope for a “blessing of heaven” and wait for an early court verdict. The trick is that the sentence will be carried out in any case, but it would be very difficult to meet the amnesty deadline. So you think involuntarily about the sincerity of such mercy on the part of the government.
But a particularly cruel and insurmountable obstacle was the decree on amnesty for the defendants in the well-known “Cases of the Twelve”. Do not forget that they all had one common grief, one common "legal trap." But all the accused had different statuses. Of course, it was profitable for the participants in the riots to try to speed up the process and go towards the investigation in order to wait for a probable release. Accused of violence against representatives of law enforcement agencies, in turn, were forced to desperately, with a vengeance to defend themselves. Perhaps they would have to appeal to higher authorities, but such a line of behavior literally contradicted and prevented their "unfortunate friends" from avoiding criminal punishment.
Opinions of professionals. The main disadvantages of the amnesty
For a long time, Russian human rights activists and well-known lawyers commented on the decision of the authorities and mercilessly criticized certain provisions of the decree and the application of the amnesty as such.
For some, as attorney Maria Baronova, the situation has become even more incomprehensible and doubtful than before. She emphasized the unconventional nature of the 2013 amnesty, mentioning that all previous “pardons” were not tied to specific stages of the investigation or trial. The jubilee amnesty unobtrusively "chose" the lucky ones whom it touches. The strange wording that only convicts will be amnestied has puzzled both specialists and the population as a whole.
Dmitry Agranovsky, who saw in her an attempt to intervene in legal proceedings, did not like the procedure for applying the amnesty, as it becomes necessary for defendants under articles 212 and 230 to become convicted and hear a guilty verdict. Moreover, the terms were not at all acceptable and reasonable; they should hardly have been enough to pronounce a sentence. According to the lawyer, such a formulation of the question puts certain pressure on the participants in the process; he hardly recalled cases when the public observed such strange conditions of amnesty. Dmitry expressed hope that an appropriate amendment would be made to this paragraph of the draft resolution, otherwise it would look unworthy for our state.
Sergey Davidis, as the organizer of the rally on May 6, notes positive changes in the policy of the Russian authorities, but he joined the opinion of his “colleagues”, noting that the amnesty was somewhat poorer and more unpretentious than the public expected. The easiest way was to release women and children, although it is obvious to everyone that prisoners are mostly adult men, many of whom are unproven for crimes, incriminated by him for reasons that are already unclear to anyone.
What do competent officials say in this regard?
In December, civil-educational and patriotic events took place throughout the country, we celebrated the day of the Constitution of the Russian Federation-2013. Few people liked the amnesty, but not only independent and opposition experts came forward with criticism, but also people holding high posts in various large organizations.
Lyudmila Alekseeva, Chairperson of the Helsinki Group in Moscow, expressed fears that, as is often the case with Russian law, unpredictable changes will be made at the last moment, and not many prisoners will leave the places of deprivation of liberty as planned and advertised earlier .
The Human Rights Council tried to refute this information. Andrei Babushkin made an official statement, arguing that the published draft has little in common with what it drew up and drafted. He also confirmed the "pseudo-sincerity" of the amnesty, because according to that draft resolution less than one and a half thousand people could have been released, as many would have been released from custody. Such figures were called by the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation, listing how many women, children and minor offenders should be amnestied. In fact, the promised amnesty could not solve any of the tasks set: to reduce the number of prisoners in correctional institutions, reunite broken families, correct excessively punitive statistics and various prison mistakes. But Babushkin admitted that there are still similarities between the two versions of the project: they both included clauses prescribing articles under the amnesty, according to which the defendants were to be released under articles on the riots and “swamps”.
Valery Borschev, a member of the supervisory commission of the city of Moscow, expressed regret that accused of resisting the police and violent actions against them will not be amnestied. He adheres to the position that for the most part the charges in these cases are unsubstantiated.
Henry Reznik, representative and chairman of the Bar, explained the decision by the authorities to keep his political face and restore his reputation, which had suffered so much after conflicts, rallies and high-profile proceedings with Pussy Riot, the Bolotnaya case and others.
One way or another, almost all public figures and jurists agreed that the amnesty on the day of the Constitution was not at all pure, transparent and “for the people”. Many called these government measures "window dressing," and people who were not related to the legislative, executive, or judicial and government structures did not at all attach any amnesty to any supervalue, they were skeptical about the project and, as is customary with us, with distrust. However, the act of amnesty can be considered quite successfully implemented, because many widely publicized scandals were ultimately resolved in such a way "conciliatory" with the authorities.
Have they believed in the West?
Western media timed the “grace” of the Russian authorities for the upcoming Olympics in 2014, the venue of which Sochi was chosen. In Europe, they really appreciated this step, the release of such a large number of prisoners to foreign politicians and public figures seemed a correct and logical step, albeit not entirely effective. InoPressa, for example, cited an article from a German magazine that talked about the insolvency and pathos of an amnesty. The New Times held the same point of view, the amnesty was carried out with the aim of redressing the shame and creating an image of a democratic, free Russia before the Olympic Games. According to popular belief, this became the reason for such a symbolic choice of date - Constitution Day of Russia. The amnesty took place, but it became only an emblem, a vivid attempt to prove oneself from a new perspective, to demonstrate the state in a new light. That is why amendments to the bill were a priori meaningless, because the resolution itself was worthless, all the wordings were unsuccessful, and the phrases and theses were florid.