LET US TURN now to the evidence Pechernikova did not address: the subterranean foundation of the Budanov case.
On the last night of her young life, Elza Kungaeva was not only strangled but also raped. From the forensic report:
The burial site is a plot in the forest plantation 950 meters from the command post of the tank regiment. The body of a naked woman is discovered wrapped in a tartan blanket.
The body is lying on its left side, the legs pressed to the stomach, the arms bent at the elbows and pressed to the trunk. The perineum in the region of the external genital organs is smeared with blood, and the blanket in this place is also bloodstained.
A forensic investigation of Kungaeva’s body was carried out on March 28, 2000,… by Captain V. Lyanenko, director of the Medical Section, 124th Laboratory Medical Corps. On the external genital organs, on the surface skin of the perineum and on the rear surface of the upper third of the thigh, are moist smears of a dark-red color resembling blood and mucus…. On the hymen there are bruised radial linear tears. In the buttock crease there are dried traces of a red-dark-brown color. Two cm from the anal aperture there is a tear of the mucous membrane…. The tear is filled with coagulated blood, which indicates it occurred antemortem. On the side of the blanket turned toward the corpse, there is a damp patch of dark-brown color resembling that of blood….
Together with the body there were recovered: 1. Blouse, woolen. Back torn (cut) vertically the full length… 5. Underpants, worn. Removal of specimens for forensic examination not undertaken in view of the lack of suitable conditions for preserving and conserving them….
The tears in the hymen and mucous membrane of the rectum… resulted from the insertion of a blunt, hard object (objects)…. It is possible that such object might have been an engorged (erect) penis. It could, however, have been the haft of a small entrenching tool….
From the very beginning of the investigation Budanov had categorically denied rape. But someone had clearly violated Elza Kungaeva before she was murdered. Since during the last hours of Elza’s life Budanov was alone with her, and since he allowed his soldiers to enter his quarters only after she was dead, one conclusion seems inescapable.
Two forensic analyses were performed during the preliminary investigation. When the court set about its whitewash of Budanov, it commissioned a third report for the same purpose as the new psychiatric report commissioned from the Serbsky Institute: to deliver the conclusions the military establishment and the Kremlin wanted to hear, and to avoid having an officer awarded two Orders of Valor shown to be a rapist.
According to the third report, which contradicts everything the original medical corps examiner had seen with his own eyes, “The tears of the hymen and mucosa of the rectum occurred postmortem when the retractive capacity characteristic of living tissue had been completely lost.” In other words, while someone had abused this girl, it most certainly had not been Budanov. He had an alibi. After murdering her, he had gone peacefully to sleep.
To make this explanation seem more plausible, the profuse bleeding Lyanenko had seen was interpreted as follows: “… the presence of bloodstains in the region of the external genital organs does not contradict the conclusion regarding the postmortem origination of these injuries….” These experts augmented their conclusions with a sideswipe at the earlier report: “The unexplained decision by the consultant not to collect material for forensic histological analysis does not allow us to conclude more definitely at the present time….”
In a war zone, with nowhere to conserve histological specimens, the absence of definitive proof strengthened the colonel’s alibi. Without a tissue analysis, as the latest pathologists asserted, any attempt to prove that a rape had occurred, and that the perpetrator had been Budanov, was doomed to failure.
The desired conclusion could now be delivered: “There are no data supporting the hypothesis that the posthumous injuries were caused by an erect male sexual organ. The results of the forensic examination of the body and the material evidence give no grounds for concluding that a forcible sexual act was committed against Kungaeva.”
In other words, the report acquitted Budanov.
The experts who signed the report evidently imagined their efforts had removed a stain from the Russian army’s uniform. From the jacket perhaps, but not from the trousers.
As the Budanov case dragged on, the reaction of Russia’s women became more and more disturbing. Women comprise more than half the population; thus one might expect a majority of Russians to despise a rapist. Apparently not. Tens of millions of Russians have young daughters, and, if only for that reason, one might expect them to understand and identify with the Kungaev family’s grief. Again, apparently not. Budanov’s wife was interviewed on television. She talked about her poor husband having to endure all those examinations and a trial, and about their little daughter who was tired of waiting for her daddy to come home. The country sympathized with the colonel’s wife—not, it seemed, with the Kungaevs, who, wait as they might, would never see their daughter again.
In 2002, when the experts accepted that Budanov had been temporarily insane at the moment of committing the murder, he was cleared of rape. No storm of indignation swept the country. There was not a single protest demonstration, not even from women’s organizations. No civil-rights defenders took to the streets. Russia thought what had happened was fair enough. The report acquitting the colonel triggered a wave of war crimes in Chechnya, committed by soldiers who used the disastrous situation and the cruelty perpetrated by both sides as a cover. Throughout 2002, “purging” of territory continued in Chechnya on a massive scale and with extreme brutality. Villages were surrounded, men taken away, women raped. Many were killed, and even more disappeared without a trace. Retaliation was elevated to justification for murder. Lynch law was encouraged by the Kremlin itself—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. We discovered that we were moving backward, from stagnation under Leonid Brezhnev to the out-and-out arbitrariness of Joseph Stalin. “terrifying as the thought was, we probably had the government we deserved.
Budanov’s final address to the court was scheduled for July 1, 2002, indicating that the judicial mummery of the case was about to conclude. Elza Kungaeva’s parents and their lawyers left the courtroom, unable to stomach the perverse traducing of morality and the desecration of the law. Supporters of the colonel and his colleagues were braying outside the walls of the courtroom, in the expectation that another couple of days would see them and Budanov toasting their victory with vodka.
Suddenly, something happened. Budanov’s final address was abruptly canceled. The verdict, which had been expected on July 3, was not delivered. To everyone’s surprise, a break in the hearings was announced until the beginning of October, and Budanov was taken off to Moscow again, back to the Serbsky Institute for a further, by now fourth, medical report. What was going on?
Perhaps the strong pressure exerted by the German Bundestag, with letters and appeals addressed to Putin personally, had some effect. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder himself had been inquiring at summit meetings as to why those trying Budanov the war criminal seemed interested only in getting him acquitted. Sources within the president’s office say Putin had no answer. None of this should be too surprising. In Russia, with its byzantine traditions of servility, such trivia are often sufficient to change the course of history.[7]
The hearings started up again on October 3. Attention was focused on the new psychological and psychiatric report. Many were anticipating a sensation, but, in fact, there was only a rerun. Budanov was again found to have suffered a “temporary pathological dysfunction of his mental activity.” The verdict was delivered on December 31, 2002—a day when few Russians have anything very serious on their minds—and thus entirely predictable: he would not bear criminal responsibility, and the court would insist on psychiatric treatment, the length of which would be decided by the doctor treating him.
7
It is important to understand what changed the direction the judicial proceedings were taking, toward justice in accordance with the law. Psychological and psychiatric reports were crucial in the Budanov case. When it became apparent that Budanov might be released from detention right there in the courtroom, the Memorial Civil Rights Center and the director of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, Professor Yury Savenko, sent a request to colleagues in Germany to produce a report for the trial based on the documentary evidence. Simultaneously, lawyers stated in court that they had no confidence in the politically motivated Russian psychiatric experts and demanded that respected foreign psychiatrists be officially invited to contribute to the trial. Despite the fact that the judge refused this demand, the German psychiatrists soon presented their conclusions, which were passed to members of the Bundestag. As a result, the spotlight turned onto the biased reports of the Russian psychiatrists, which were contrasted with the German specialists’ conclusions. Then Gerhard Schröder brought up the case in conversation with Putin, who, while not much concerned about public opinion in his own country, is highly sensitive to criticism from abroad. Shortly afterward, the trial in Rostov-on-Don dramatically changed direction, which only goes to show, once again, the dependence of the courts on Russia’s leaders. The state prosecutor who had spoken in favor of Budanov was replaced by one who was unbiased. Lawyers were allowed to call witnesses. The judge agreed to attach to the case file the long report by Dr. Stuart Turner, a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, in London. For Dr. Turner, Yury Budanov was not the politically sensitive figure he was for us; he was just another patient. Thus it was Western intervention that changed the direction of the Budanov trial.