24 May 2007, 22:36
Court would wait for the report on searching Ulman
Today, the proceedings on Ulman's case continued in Rostov-on-Don. Only one of the four defendants - Alexei Perelevskiy - has appeared at the courtroom. Judge Nikolai Gulko has declared that the whereabouts of Eduard Ulman, Vladimir Voevodin and Alexander Kalaganskiy, who had been announced into federal search, are still unknown.
State prosecutor Nikolai Titov has moved a petition with reference to Part 5, Article 247, of the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure, which provides for, in exclusive cases (grave and especially grave crimes), consideration of a criminal case in the absence of the defendant (absente reo).
However, Roman Krzhechkovskiy, Eduard Ulman's advocate, has voiced against it: "Consideration of the case in absence of defendants is possible under the law, if the court possesses the information that they are outside Russia or evade from appearance at the court. Here, the court has no reliable data that the defendants are evading from appearance at the court, since there is no data whether they are alive or not. In this connection, we ask to suspend the proceedings of the criminal case."
Finally, at the Ulman's process the court has postponed making a decision whether to go on with the case or suspend it until arrival of any information on the results of searching the defendants.
Author: Elena Olenina, CK correspondent
