October 7, 2016 - Second appeal
Yesterday I had the privilege to be interviewed on WVGV radio, West Virginia's Gospel Voice. I made an audio recording of the interview. You can listen to it here. I added some clips of the announcements before the interview.
I received a call yesterday from a human rights organization in Strasbourg, France. They are following my case closely. If and when we exhaust all of our appeals in Russia without success, they are prepared to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Russia is a member state of the Council of Europe, and is supposed to be subject to the decisions of this court. Last year, however, Russia declared that its own laws would overrule any decisions of this court. Although Russia can ignore the rulings of the ECHR, they would risk further international sanctions by doing so. It is interesting to know that this is an option if we fail in the Russian court system.
Last night, my lawyer sent me documents and instructions for the next level of appeal. This step is very different from the previous one. We will not have a hearing this time. All we need to do is file several pages of documents with the court. The senior level local judge or judges will review the paperwork and render a decision. I filed the papers today and so the next level of appeal is now already in progress. The court clerk told me that this review could take up to a month. I will post any new information as soon as it becomes available.
Here are links to some documents. For most of you, these will not mean anything, but there are people following this case who will find the Russian legal documents informative and helpful.
Here is the verdict that was handed down last Friday at the end of our first appeal.
Here is the document that we filed to appeal the case to the next level.