Perhaps the Chita Region court will hear Lebedev’s appeal at last

On Thursday the Chita Region court will begin, possibly, to examine the appeal by Platon Lebedev’s defence team. His lawyers are complaining against the refusal of a judge at the city’s Central district court to examine their complaint about the actions of investigator A.V. Akimov.

The defence considers that the team of investigators made an unconstitutional attempt to monopolise the collection of evidence and unlawfully denied the attorneys their right to add the evidence they had accumulated to the case documentation.

The examination of this appeal has already been twice deferred by the Chita Region court. On 29 July the hearing did not take place because Platon Lebedev was not brought to court from the city’s pre-trial detention centre. On 30 July the court considered that Lebedev’s attorney Vladimir Krasnov had not been properly informed about the time at which the hearings would take place.