The “expert opinion”, which is easily the basis of the claim for the liquidation of “Memorial”, was drawn up by a translator and a mathematics teacher – “Novaya”

The “Research Note”, which formed the basis for the lawsuit to liquidate the Memorial Human Rights Center, was drawn up by mathematics teacher Natalia Kryukova and translator Alexander Tarasov. About it writes “New Newspaper”.

As the newspaper writes, “Help” is positioned as “psychological and linguistic research”, but its authors on basic education are not psychologists or linguists. As the author of the material, co-founder of Dissernet and editor of the data department of Novaya Gazeta, Andrei Zayakin, managed to find out, over the decades of work, only three publications of Tarasov were published in journals included in the list of VAK. No such publications were found in Kryukova’s works.

At the same time, the lack of expert qualifications and competencies of Kryukova was confirmed by the court during the process of extorting a bribe from the president of Rosenergomash LLC, Vladimir Palikhata. In particular, the appeal ruling of the Judicial Collegium of the Moscow Regional Court established that the mathematics teacher “does not have special knowledge in the field of philology and linguistics.”

Novaya Gazeta adds that only the Dissernet website has published five expert opinions or expert opinions co-authored by Kryukova and Tarasov on a number of high-profile cases, including the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses and New Greatness. At the same time, in the conclusions, the translator and the mathematics teacher act as religious scholars, sexologists, culturologists, social anthropologists, linguists and lawyers.

At the same time, in the “examinations” in which Kryukova and Tarasov took part, it is not indicated which facts were established by which of the experts and who came to what conclusions.

In the “Help” dedicated to Memorial Human Rights Center, the teacher and the translator agreed that the materials of the human rights center “contain linguistic and psychological signs of justifying the activities of members of the international terrorist organizations Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami”, “Tablighi Jamaat” , “At-Takfir wal Hijra”, as well as the extremist organizations “Artpodgotovka” and participants convicted by the court in accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation as illegally convicted (even in cases where their intentions – target attitudes – do not coincide in their value basis with the most widespread democratic attitudes) “.

On November 18, representatives of Memorial during a press conference held at the Moscow office of International Memorial, toldthat one of the reasons why the prosecutor’s office filed a lawsuit to liquidate the organization was the lists of political prisoners that human rights defenders have been keeping since 2009. According to the prosecutor’s office, in connection with the fact that some of the people who were included in these lists were sentenced under terrorist and extremist articles, Memorial allegedly justifies participation in banned organizations.

“Memorial Human Rights Center has never justified such actions. The sole purpose of adding a person to the list of political prisoners is to assess the validity and fairness of his criminal prosecution, ”explained Tatyana Glushkova, member of the Memorial Human Rights Center Council, lawyer.

Chairman of the Council of Memorial Human Rights Center Alexander Cherkasov, in turn, added that the examination on “signs of justification” was carried out by the Center for Sociocultural Expertise, which was noted in the cases of Pussy Riot, the head of the Karelian branch of Memorial Yuri Dmitriev and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

At the same time, according to Cherkasov, the Prosecutor General’s Office issued a conclusion on “justifying terrorism and extremism” in early December last year. “Then they also tried to check us, but where they got there, they crawled away. There are still papers that have now been slowly attached to the claim to the Moscow City Court. <...> All this is complete nonsense, they themselves know it. Now, when they were apparently kicked from above, they planted these pieces of paper again, ”Cherkasov said.

We will remind, on November 11, the Prosecutor General’s Office applied to the Supreme Court demanding the liquidation of Memorial and its structural units for “systematic violations of the legislation on“ foreign agents ”. In addition, expertise discovered linguistic and psychological signs of justifying extremism and terrorism in the register of political prisoners maintained by the Memorial Human Rights Center, which is part of the International Memorial.

The organization was defended by the Council of Europe, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. And the writer Lyudmila Petrushevskaya protesting against the authorities’ desire to liquidate Memorial refused from the title of laureate of the State Prize.

The memorial was also defended by members of the “July 1” club, which includes academicians and corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, more than 70 cultural workersincluding British actor and playwright Stephen Fry, British playwright Tom Stoppard and South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee, as well as 13 Czech MPs.