
Five years ago, on the 19-th of June, 2003, there was launched the «Yukos case». At that day Alexey Pichugin, taken the position of the head of the Economic Security Department as the part of the Security Service of the company, was arrested. Then, nobody could assume that the
list of the shareholders and the «Yukos»’ employees who incurred a cruel pressure and persecution, would number tens of surnames, and the company itself would cease to exist.
Alexey Pichugin was the first one who faced the attack. Having neither imperious ambitions, nor relations to flow of funds, he suffered the cruelest punishment stipulated by Russian modern Criminal Code – in the total absence any direct proofs of his fault from the prosecution.
Alexey Pichugin stood this blow. Not having derogated in false perjury which the investigators had demanded from him during all five years, not having slandered neither himself nor the «Yukos»’ top-management, he found himself in a «
Black dolphin», a colony for condemned to long-life imprisonment.
But it is very far to the end in Alexey Pichugin’s case, whatever they say from the rostrums. His appeal from the sentence is waiting its processing in the European Court of Human Rights. Lots of people try to free Alexey Pichugin by all the mean which are provided by law. His case is at the centre of public attention.
Today, on the fifth anniversary of the arrest the portal HRO.org publishes the points of view of many people about Alexey Pichugin.
To the portal HRO.org’ s questions there replied the human rights activists Elena Bonner, Svetlana Gannushkina, Lyudmila Alekseeva, a poetess and an anchorwoman Natella Boltyanskaya, a politician Alexey Melnikov and a former «Yukos»’ vice-president Leonid Nevzlin.