According to the Russian news agency Interfax, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law last Friday that allows a defendant to be tried a second time, even following a legitimate acquittal or conviction. Under this new law a criminal case can be reopened or a previous court decision can be reviewed if evidence of a more serious crime by the accused comes to light.

The bill, which was introduced by the Russian Government, was adopted by the State Duma on April 12 and then approved by the Federation Council on April 17.

The new bill provides almost limitless possibilities to charge a person (even if he has already served his sentence) with new graver offences for the same act. It was introduced alongside two other bills, which – despite criticisms of many experts – allow for the multiplication of the number of fraud offences in the Russian Criminal Code and a severe reduction of the jurisdiction of juries.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant, one of the most consistent critics of the three bills, was interviewed by the Khodorkovsky Press Centre in regard to the laws in question:

Did you hope that the bill would stall at some point and not become a law? For instance, did you entertain a possibility that the document wouldn’t be signed by Putin?

Since the bill was pushed through so purposefully and with such blatant surreptitiousness, and the legislative initiative came from the Russian Government rather than from some exotic parliamentarian, unfortunately there was no hope that the bill would fail to become a law. A quite derisive reference to the fact that this bill comes in fulfilment of a Constitutional Court decision of 2007 also pointed at a firm intention to have this law adopted (and for some reason this 2007 Constitutional Court decision was recalled exactly now, and they used it as a springboard).

All this together showed that purposeful work was being done to push this bill through and have it adopted. And they kept silent [about all this work]. Usually, when such a theme arises, people from, for instance, United Russia come, for instance, to Rossiya TV channel and tell us what a great law it is and how those who object to it simply don’t understand their good luck. And here everything was done completely quietly. By the way, the same thing happened to the bill on the so-called differentiation of the liability for fraud. That bill was also very hypocritical [it became the law on 10 December 2012 – Press Centre]. Although there was more fanfare there. It was called “humanising” because there was a trick there: allegedly no case can be opened without an application from the injured party. In reality, it’s also deceptive.

In addition, this past week, on April 24, a bill taking practically all cases except for first-degree murders out of the jurisdiction of the jury passed the first reading at the State Duma. There was some pause with that bill (it was introduced in November 2012), but even here the principle of a moving caravan is being implemented consistently as planned.

What, in your opinion, will be the first consequences of these developments?

Such legislative novelties are constantly expanding possibilities to make arbitrariness look quasi-legitimate. Arbitrariness has existed for quite a long time already, and is getting bigger and bigger (selective repressions are widening and spreading to a constantly growing circle of people), but now, as I understand, a need arose for this kind of decoration – just to have something to refer to: “So what’s the problem? That’s the kind of law we have! And we simply enforce it! And the fact that a person won’t have the right to a jury trial in respect of the circumstances that we found right now – this is also the law. It’s not us who adopt laws, all we do is enforce them to the letter.” That’s what the people in uniform will tell us.

Are you willing to call the law signed by the president on Friday repressive?

Absolutely. I saw a publication about this somewhere, the title looked something like this: “Now one can be kept in jail forever”. I think this title catches the essence of that legislative novelty absolutely correctly.

Can the new law touch upon people from “the Yukos case”?

This new law can touch upon absolutely anyone without exception. And everything will depend on whether a high-level finger points at this or that particular person or not, and at which point it happens.