Church tries to help the Latvian pilots in custody in India

CHURCH TRIES TO HELP THE LATVIAN PILOTS IN CUSTODY IN INDIA

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, sent on July 17 a letter to the head of the Russian Presidential Citizenship Directorate O. Kutafin asking to grant Russian citizenship to Alexander Klishin, Oleg Gaidash, Igor Moskovitin. Igor Timmerman and Eugene Antimenko, the crew of the Latvian aircraft held in detention in India.

The letter was prompted by the request made by the crew from a prison in Calcutta, West Bengal, India. The pilots, who are ethnic Russian non-citizen residents of Latvia, made it verbally to a representative of the Moscow Patriarchate who visited them in prison while on a mission to India last February, asking him to convey their request for Russian citizenship to the Russian authorities. The written petitions were handed over to the Russian General Consul in Calcutta by their relatives who visited them last May.

The crew of the Latvian aircraft were arrested by the Indian special services in December 1995 after a load of arms was dropped from their airplane to the territory of West Bengal. What is important, however, is that the pilots under investigation do not accept the accusations of international terrorism and aggression against India brought by the investigation. According to their lawyer Mr. Srenik Singhvi, their relatives who visited them last May and Rev. Dionisy Pozdnyaev of the Moscow Patriarchate who visited them last February, the crew rejected these accusations.

The Indian government commission which investigated the “Purulia” case qualified the incident as a mere violation of aviation and customs rules. The conclusions of the commission were published in The Telegraph on December 22, 1996. Nevertheless, given to the gravity of the accusations with supporting evidence absent, the case has been at bar for over two years and a half now. The investigation of the case has already violated four Indian Constitution articles and eleven articles of the Indian Criminal Code of Practice. The lawyer of the accused says that their fundamental rights are still violated as the unthinkable custody conditions and lack of proper medical aid have brought two members of the crew to the verge of death.

According to the crew’s lawyer, there are no grounds in the materials of the case to sentence them, yet no judge in India will take the responsibility to acquit them. He also says that the Indian security service is ready to withdraw the accusations if the Indian Government instruct them to do so. Otherwise the investigation can last from 10 to 20 years.

If Russian citizenship were granted them the attitude to the crew under investigation would be considerably changed to speed up the ruling. The UN Human Rights Committee organized last May an urgent action in support of the arrested crew. The request of the crew for Russian citizenship has been supported by a number of human rights organizations in Moscow, in particular, by the International Advocacy Center in Moscow.