Alexey Pichugin information

Alexey Vladimirovich Pichugin (Russian: Алексе́й Влади́мирович Пичу́гин; born July 25, 1962, in Orekhovo-Zuevo, Moscow Oblast, USSR) is a former manager in the security department at the Russian oil company Yukos. In 2003, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated a campaign to expropriate Yukos and to harass and punish its executives. During testimony before an international tribunal in a case challenging Russia's campaign against Yukos, in which the tribunal found the company indeed had been unlawfully expropriated, a former advisor to President Putin testified that the campaign included formation in February 2003 of “a special unit [that] was set up to fabricate evidence” and to “launch the Government attack [against Yukos] under the guise of ‘legitimate’ court proceedings".^[1] Pichugin faced multiple trials, which have been determined by the European Court of Human Rights to have been unfair and in violation of his human rights.^[2][3] His case has been described as a politically motivated attempt to obtain false evidence against Yukos executives Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Leonid Nevzlin and Pichugin is said to be “the longest-serving political prisoner in Russia".^[4][5][6]

Though not himself a high-ranking Yukos executive, Pichugin was arrested on June 19, 2003. His was the first arrest in the campaign against Yukos and those associated with that company. Many view Pichugin as a pawn in efforts to silence or punish Khodorkovsky, Nevzlin or other politically active Yukos leaders.^[7][8]

During his first year in captivity, Pichugin described being drugged and interrogated without counsel while being pressed to give testimony against Yukos's leadership.^[7][8] He has since been subjected to multiple trials in Moscow, each accusing him of involvement in supposed murders and attempted murders. While the trials resulted in his conviction, and in his being sentenced to life in prison, the cases against Pichugin were based entirely on hearsay accusations of jailhouse confessors, a number of which later testified that they named Pichugin only after being pressured by Russian investigators to do so. As noted, the European Court of Human Rights found that his trials violated Pichugin's fundamental human rights. The European Court found that Pichugin's rights were violated by the secrecy of the trial proceedings in the first case against him, which were closed to the public and media; by the trial court's refusal to hear defense evidence; by the trial court's interfering with defense cross-examination of government witnesses; and by violation of the presumption of innocence to which criminal defendants are entitled in every case. In both European Court judgments, the Court stated that the appropriate remedy for Pichugin would be a new and fair trial.^[2][3] In both cases, Russian authorities refused to provide that new and fair trial. According to former Minister of Justice of Germany Herta Däubler-Gmelin: “The European Court found that [Pichugin’s] fair trial rights had been violated and ordered a new trial. But Russia ignored that judgment and continues to hold Mr. Pichugin in the notorious ‘Black Dolphin’ prison....”^[9]

In April 2017, during free debate before the Parliamentary Assembly for the Council of Europe, the appointed rapporteur from the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights called out Pichugin’s case, describing Russia’s treatment of him as “tantamount to moral torture,” stating: “There can be no place for such inhumanity in our community of law.”^[10]