"The day of
the Court of Appeal of the spy Algirdas Paleckis, sometimes popularly called
Paleckiukas, is approaching. Possibly not the last, but still significant. Will
the court act lightly, irresponsibly, like non-citizens? Will the court discount how much money was spent to lock up
Paleckis, how many officers labored day and night, and what great black work
did they do?
Will the case of
the dangerous Russian spy network, which sounded so loud, go back to eternal
rest in a repository of failed cases? We remember how three years ago the heads
of the prosecutor's office, State Security Service (SSD) and police informed the nation during a
specially organized press conference that potentially international,
potentially armed spy network was aimed at hitting the most sensitive places in
our country, the country's constitutional structure, and even the country's
sovereignty.
But, as the
commanders said, their services unmasked that network in time and eliminated
all threats. And Paleckiukas, the main knitter of that crime, was locked up
in Lukiškės. The President of the country presented the leaders with high state
awards.
Three years have
passed. And here is Algirdas Paleckis sitting behind bars, like a scapegoat,
although it is not yet clear whether he is sitting alone.
An ordinary person
asks (no one can forbid an ordinary person to ask): “And where is the network
gone, where is the whole Paleckis band? Why isn't it sitting?”
Answer - The
network is gone. He is not.
That network is
the fruit of the creation of our services. This fruit must have caused the
Lithuanian people to be proud of our great services and outraged by the
relevant services in Russia. This network may have had to convince the Lithuanian
people that Paleckiukas was locked up in a unit and held there without trial
with reason. The non-existent network, having completed its mission,
disappeared at an early stage of the pre-trial investigation. The case came to
court only with A. Paleckis. True, there was another figurant standing next to
him in court, but he was not sitting. He probably didn't have to sit. He
may have played his part and disappeared - he was released (we'll talk more
about that later).
Only the hero
of our essay has not disappeared. He has been, is and will be. Just a question that
worries society: where will it be? In the prison or outside?
Professor V.
Landsbergis thinks (similarly he is not alone) that there are a number of holes
in the case. Through which a spy can escape to freedom. If
that happens, it will be wrong. Algirdas Paleckis will no longer be the one we
applauded the cats three years ago when they closed him in Lukiškės. He will walk
like a saint, in the words of the Professor, with a radiant halo of martyrdom.
What will you do with him then? Close the saint to the prison? He will write a
complaint to the pope himself. It is unfortunate that the Vatican could start
praying for St. Paleckiukas.
Maybe that case is
sewn with too many light threads, maybe there are actually a lot of holes in
it. Or, according to lawyers, there are holes alone. But even in this case, the
Court of Appeal and the Lithuanian courts in general should make a joint effort
to pull the case as long as possible, stinking the rope for as long as
possible. Until it wakes up, it is covered in the dust of oblivion and other
current affairs, other pandemics, other migratory flows, other rioters, other
cataclysms of a warming global climate. And then it will be possible to see
that case of spies and quietly, without bells, without hymns, without gritty
tongues, put it under the turf. Amen.
With these words
about the Court of Appeal, we will end. And let’s move on to the substance of
the Paleckis case.
Crime and
Punishment
As the Šiauliai
Regional Court found, Algirdas Paleckis committed the crime provided for in the
second part of Article 119 of the Lithuanian Criminal Code. This is espionage.
Together with his joint conspirator Bertauskas (sometimes called Deimančiukas), he
collected public information about the judges and prosecutors of the January 13
case on behalf of an unidentified Russian intelligence officer.
The prosecutor
drew the court's attention to the danger to society from the crime committed by
Paleckis and to his dangerous anti-social personality.
The prosecutor
found no circumstances mitigating Paleckis' guilt. And aggravating found.
Paleckis alternately testified during the process, apparently to avoid the
punishment he deserved. He did not confess to committing criminal offenses. In
addition, he is previously been convicted ("our own shot at our own"). This
conviction has disappeared. But such things do not go away. The prosecutor
asked the court to sentence Algirdas Paleckis to nine years in prison. The
court essentially agreed with everything the prosecutor said (there are no
mitigating circumstances aggravating are in the abundance) and sentenced Algirdas
Paleckis to six years in prison.
And why not nine?
That's why, as the
court found, Paleckis was not spying on secret but on public information. But
they are not cold either “According to the case data, the tasks of the Federal
Security Service were not fully completed, and the information gathered that
was of interest to the intelligence of the Russian Federation was not passed
on. That is, it did not have any negative consequences."
As A. Paleckis had
already been sitting in solitary confinement for 528 days, the term was
shortened accordingly.
The prosecutor
said he agreed with the sentence imposed by the court, six would suffice.
Paleckis'
lawyers disagreed. They said that all that was going on here was complete
nonsense that they had not seen anything like it in their many years of
practice. They said there was no evidence in the case that Mr Paleckis had
spied, that he had changed testimony in the course of the investigation. They
also said that Lithuania would be made fun of because of such a verdict in the
Strasbourg court. They said they would appeal this unconscious verdict to the
Court of Appeal. As you know, they did.
It can be
difficult for the average person to understand. The spy didn't spy on anything,
it didn't hurt anyone - and six years? Isn't that too much? We will answer the
question with a question. Isn't that too little?
For lifetime
merits
No matter how
dangerous the crime committed by A. Paleckis, his personality is significantly
more dangerous than doing that espionage.
His personality is
as if programmed to do dangerous things. And no one can reprogram it anymore.
According to
researchers, personality formation begins in early childhood. A well-known
French writer, he was also a military pilot, wrote, "I came from
childhood, as if from the country." And from what childhood, from what
country did Algirdas Paleckis come? The prosecutor who led the investigation
investigated and found that it was "he spent his childhood in the Russian
Federation" (he lived in Moscow from 3 months to 3 years). That’s where he came from!
When investigating
Paleckis' personality, prosecutors and judges seem to be asking for his
pioneering year. And youth hangs. They draw attention to Paleckis' extensive
education, which he no doubt acquired in his youth. During his youth, he did
not waste time studying both in Lithuania and abroad (Paris). He earned several
higher education diplomas. He is fluent in four foreign languages and two
more knows weaker.
For an ordinary
person, such an education may prove to be good. A good education is good for a
good person and bad for a bad person.
Officials are
convinced that with such an education, with such language skills, with such
childhood, even with extensive connections in the West, Paleckis will get
anywhere. By avoiding responsibility, he can flee abroad, integrate perfectly
there and, of course, start working for Russia again. Thus, the only way out is
solitary confinement in Lukiškės prison.
Further,
prosecutors and judges approach the more mature age of A. Paleckis and note
that his dangerous anti-social attitudes were formed long before espionage.
Thus, Kaunas
judges view life, at least the life of A. Paleckis, as a sequence of logically
successive events, as an algorithm. It was this sequence (algorithm) that
logically led to spyware. Because, logically, he could not bring him to
anything else and could not.
The verdict notes
that being in society is a constant, permanent state of Paleckis' personality.
Such was it before the espionage, such was the time of espionage, such,
unfortunately, it survived even after he was caught, locked up.
As you know, he
took part in the rally organized by the family march in Vingis Park. Someone
saw him and in that riot at the rally near the Seimas. He finished writing the book he started in prison, published it, sold
it out, and says he was already preparing a second edition.
The verdict says
that A. Paleckis demonstrates not only unacceptable anti-social views, but
"also the desire to act against the Republic of Lithuania". People of
a character like Paleckiukas achieve what they want. If he doesn’t, he still
strives.
Thus, our justice
sends Paleckiukas behind bars for a longer period of time. It is necessary to be protected from insignificant spies, from their supposed nets. And still
don’t know from what. Because such trained bad guys can come up with everything.
Those six years
not only and not so much for spying without consequences, not just for what he
did wrong. But also for what he does badly. But most for what bad he can
still think and do.
His crime is not
an accidental mistake in the difficult path of life, not a mistake. His whole
life is a mistake. His crime is his life story.
Six years for a
lifetime of merit. Is that much?
There is no direct
evidence, but that is not a problem
The court
acknowledges that with direct evidence in this case, the absence.
The court says: "Depending on the specifics of the crime in question, it
may be difficult to find direct evidence to support this, but it is not always
the direct evidence that determines the guilt of the offender and the
perpetrator." When there are no direct ones, you have to translate with
indirect ones.
As far as can be
deduced from the course of the proceedings, the extent to which it has been
made public, the court essentially uses two sources of circumstantial evidence.
The first is the secret analytical certificates of the SSD, the second is the
accused Deimantas Bertauskas, who acquired the status of a special witness in
addition to the status of the accused during the proceedings.
Let’s talk about
the first source first. The court "assesses the sufficiently detailed
analytical information provided by the SSD as reliable and relies on it in the
present case, deciding the issue of the fault of D. Bertauskas and A.
Paleckis".
It is very good
that the court respects the SSD, trusts it. But SSD can also be wrong. The
author of these lines had to work in that service and had to admit, he had to
make mistakes. Of course, SSD is now much more professional, more experienced.
But even highly experienced world-class intelligence services make mistakes
that are accompanied by unpleasant consequences of the same level.
In addition, SSDs
may have certain weaknesses (and who does not). For example, you may want to
persuade the highest political authority and overdo it in some places and hold
horses in some places. It can be anything. History knows all sorts of stories
with secret certificates from SSD, STT and other services. Thus, the court,
believing and trusting the Department, should be quite critical of the
certificates, as there are more arguments for this criticism in this case.
Doubts about law
enforcement services, including the objectivity of the SSD, arose during the
very first, most prominent press conference of law enforcement chiefs, which
stated that they had identified and dismantled that unfortunate spy network.
This was followed by unprecedented spy catcher awards. The pre-trial
investigation has only just begun, it is not yet entirely clear whether the
suspects are spies, whether their network is a network, and already orders.
Such actions of Her Excellency cannot fail to seal further investigation. There
is reason to believe that the country's top government was also interested in
the course of events during the operational investigation, and who could deny
that it was not affected by the course of events. Spying caught up in politics.
All this obliges
the court to be critical of the certificates of both the SSD and other
operational services.
Below we take a
look at some of the documents in the file that have been at least partially
disclosed. Thus, on 11 August 2016, the Director of the State Security Service
D. Jauniškis applies to the Vilnius Regional Court with a request to allow the
application of covert operational surveillance / monitoring measures against A.
Paleckis. It is not apparent from the text of the address that Paleckis has
committed, is committing or preparing to commit any crime.
But other things
are seen. The address states: “It is noticeable that persons promoting
pro-Russian ideology seek to participate in the processes of making and
implementing political decisions in the Republic of Lithuania. A Paleckis is
running for office in the Seimas elections in the autumn of 2016 in the
single-member constituency of Naujoji Vilnia ”. Thus, Paleckis' guilt or sin is
that he is trying to attack the Seimas with his pro-Russian ideology.
And where are the
dangers here? First of all, pro-Russian ideology is neither good nor bad in
itself. After all, A. Navalnij's ideology is also pro-Russian, even very much.
Both Sakharov's and Solzhenitsyn's ideologies were pro-Russian.
To be or not to be
a person with something, no matter how bad, the ideology of a member of the
Seimas is not decided by the SSD, but by the voter. In this case, the SSD may
exceed the limits of its competence and possibly attempt to violate the right
guaranteed by the constitution of the promoter of that failed ideology to seek
the mandate of a member of the Seimas.
Half a year later,
the head of the SSD is back in court. He again asks permission to continue spying on Paleckis. Because, you hear, “A. Paleckis raised his candidacy in the
2016 Seimas elections and lost only by a small margin in the second round. [...]
A. Paleckis' good enough performance in the elections mobilized the
representatives of the left-wing thought politics, who both financially and
morally supported and continue to support this candidate. " Those
"left-wing politicians" are the big bad guys. If A. Paleckis
continues to mobilize them so successfully, Naujoji Vilnia will fall into his
hands after the next Seimas elections. During the second follow-up period,
nothing improved. A. Paleckis continues to propagate his ideology. The SSD asks
the court for permission to follow the said figure further and further.
Finally, o Matka boska,
and Joseph is holy, how great, what a menacing network of spies!
So, the question
mark: how did it happen here that the SSD followed, followed, watched, watched
Paleckiukas and did not notice how this real spy dilettante, in the backbone of
our professional, competent services, created such a super network? Neither
cry nor laugh.
Be that as it may,
with that network that sprouted like a mushroom overnight, we can assume that
the SSD, secretly following and observing Paleckis, was not politically
impartial, objective. And those statements, written on the basis of those
observations, were also possibly not objective, correct. As a result, it was
possible to receive such a sentence - six years.
D. Bertauskas is a
good spy
Although D.
Bertauskas is far from being the main character of the case, he is still a very
significant figure. Without him, there would probably have been no case. And if
it had arisen, it would have collapsed.
D. Bertauskas was
accused of the same serious crime - espionage. But the prosecutor asked the
court to release Bertauskas from responsibility, because he admitted everything
himself, told everything himself. And more importantly, as the prosecutor said,
D. Bertauskas did not change his testimony during the whole process. According
to the prosecutor, D. Bertauskas "admitted his guilt throughout the
proceedings, and his testimony was consistent." The court also said that
"Deimantas Bertauskas' testimony in interpreting the factual circumstances
of the commission of a criminal offense is logical, consistent, mutually
confirming and complementary."
It is at this
point that we will dare to question the statements just quoted by both the
prosecutor and the court.
According to the
case file, D. Bertauskas' testimony was neither consistent nor complementary.
At the very beginning, barely detained Bertauskas said: “I do not admit guilt -
I did not spy. I have not been recruited for any Russian intelligence
assignments." A week later in custody, he said otherwise: "I confess
to having committed a crime." And after a while: “I was not recruited. I
did not perform any tasks." After a while, he claims the same thing: “I
did not cooperate with Russian intelligence organizations. I did not perform
the tasks of Russian intelligence officers." Finally, after sitting in
Lukiškės for a longer time: "I admit guilt, I feel sorry". So, as we
can see, Bertauskas was distracted and confessed only when he was much
distracted and sitting longer.
This confession of
him is a turning point in the process. From this moment, Bertauskas is not only
an accused, but also a special witness, a very important, probably the only
witness. The fate of the case depends on his testimony. So the question is how
sincere Bertauskas' confession is and how reliable his testimonies are.
It turns out that
D. Bertauskas has already been caught. The US services have previously provided
information to Lithuanian law enforcement authorities that Bertauskas belongs
to a network of people who share pedophile content prohibited by law - photos
and videos. The Criminal Code provides for liability for such acts up to four
years in prison. Thus, Bertauskas has a weak point. It is up to the prosecutors
to make good use of it.
This is likely to
have happened. Or, dear Bertauskas, admit the spying, testify as needed, and we
will get you out of the trouble, we will let you get away. Otherwise you will be kept in prison if
not for espionage, you will find yourself behind bars for pedophile videos.
Bertauskas does not want to sit behind bars.
But one cannot
fail to notice that special problems arise alongside that particular witness in
the process. The witness must be unscrewed from the dungeon. Otherwise, he may
withdraw the certificates. And to put everything on secret VSD certificates
alone does not come out.
In our head,
neither the prosecutor's office nor the court has found an optimal solution in
this place. Circumstances that alleviate Bertauskas' situation are already
being created artificially. You hear, he, unlike the evil spy Paleckis, is a
good spy, almost a Lithuanian patriot. He helped the judiciary uncover the
intentions of Russia's spy services. Speaking at the last word, he said he
deeply regretted the dangerous acts he had committed against society. He
promised not to do so again, apologized to all the people of Lithuania and
sincerely advised them (the people of Lithuania) never to become spies of
states unfriendly to Lithuania.
The next moment
catches the eye. For one spy, the prosecutor asks for nine years, and for other,
just as dangerous, but admittedly, absolutely nothing. Thus, a person can
commit a serious crime (rape someone, rob, steal a million from the state), but being caught will apologize, change his story and be free. So why not take a risk,
steal, not rape.
In that pedophile
case, Mr Bertauskas was fined a relatively small amount of EUR 4 000. For
comparison, one Klaipėda resident paid about two tens of thousands for a
similar crime. Thus, the court could have given Bertauskas as much as
seventy-five percent discount.
Now, from all that
has been said, we will try to draw some conclusions.
First. The court
has no direct evidence. For more than two years, the SSD followed A. Paleckis.
The services carried out several dozen searches of the homes of members of the
"network". And they didn't follow up on anything, they found nothing. Thus,
either those services are of a low standard or no evidence has existed and does
not exist.
Second. The SSD
was not objective in this process. The SSD also recorded its bias in its
applications to the court for permission to follow A. Paleckis.
Third. As a
witness, D. Bertauskas cannot leave us without any doubts. He was obviously vulnerable.
Fourth. The
prosecutor's office and the court may not have escaped bias in assessing
Paleckis 'personality, as well as Bertauskas' behavior, even in asserting his
consistent, inconsistent testimony.
Fifth. What does
espionage mean, in which no, even overt, information is spionaged, no info is
passed on to anyone, and no one is harmed by anything. Probably no spy in
Europe has been convicted of such espionage, at least in recent decades. Unless
in Asia.
Sixth. From the
very beginning of the process, the political attitude of high-ranking
politicians to the case was evident. This could have affected the whole process
and the verdict.
On the issue of
patriotic justice
Well-known
political commentator Kęstutis Girnius wrote that the Paleckis court is a
desecration of justice. With all due respect to Mr. Kęstutis, we must state
that we do not agree with his position. We will set out our position later, and
now we will look at Mr Kęstutis' text in some detail. According to Girnius, a
democratic state should tolerate such outsiders as A. Paleckis.
According to him, Paleckis is no criminal. He’s just like that, and it won’t be
any different. All (or almost all) prosecutors and judges say that he will not
be different. Only prosecutors and judges still say: because he is like that,
he has a place behind bars. Girnius says the opposite: Paleckis must be free.
Girnius says that
in America, for example, the confinement of a person in solitude for
a long time, and dargi without any trial is considered cruel human torture.
After all, our prosecutors and judges say that Paleckis' desecration in
solitude is the only place that is appropriate and commensurate with the danger
of the act he has committed and his personality. It is also surprising that the
public was silent and allowed Paleckis to be tortured for so long. All
Lithuanian human rights organizations and associations of judges and lawyers
seemed to swallow water in their mouths.
And why does Mr.
Kęstutis have so many questions when no one around has, when everything is fine
for everyone? Oh, because Mr. Kęstutis is not from here. And although he’s been
here for thirty years, yet he’s not from here. It is a problem of
consciousness. A person flies here very quickly from America or even from
Japan. But human consciousness does not fly airplanes. In our head, A. Paleckis, has not been convicted because he is an odiosive figure,
an outsider. Of course, we don’t argue, it’s like that or maybe that’s it. But
he is sent behind bars not for that or not just for that. This issue needs to
be looked at more broadly.
Paleckis is a
victim of patriotic justice. The word sacrifice is not very appropriate here. A
person can be a victim of some kind of fire, flood, car accident, terrorist
act. A person can be hit by a car, lightning strikes, shot or stabbed by a
criminal. But it should not be said: a man has been traversed, struck down, our
justice has stung us. It cuts the ear.
Now, though in
general terms, we will try to define the concept of patriotic justice.
Patriotic is the kind of justice that judges, convicts, or justifies a person
not so much by law as by patriotic motives.
Probably the first
memorable lesson in patriotic justice for the law enforcement front was given
by Professor Landsbergis. In the early years of independence, he visited the
General Prosecutor's Office, teaching officials that the law must be applied
creatively and selectively. From the whole context of teaching, it was obvious
that on patriots - that is, our own, good people - we need to apply the law in one
way (humanely, empathetically, etc.) and not on patriots - in another way
(strictly, harshly, without sentiments).
It is said that
then prosecutors were really surprised when they heard such instruction. But, as life
has shown, some guardians of the law quickly regained the wits, bought the
lesson, and began to apply it in their practical work.
Later, or perhaps
at about the same time, other more or less well-known politicians undertook to
train officials. It has even been said that politicians lead prosecutors by the
nose.
We will now give some examples of how those
teachings came to life.
The first example.
In November 1994, a railway bridge over the Bražuolė stream was blown up. At
that time, the train St. Petersburg - Kaliningrad had to pass by the bridge,
and shortly after it, Klaipeda - Vilnius. It so happened that the Russian train
was passing successfully. And the Lithuanian did not fall off the rails just by
chance.
Special services
soon determined who, how and why, blew up the bridge. The suspects were not
professionals. They knew neither to mask their traces nor to maintain
confidentiality. A pre-trial investigation was initiated, but the case did not
go to court. Why did this happen? Because the suspects turned out to be
patriots. In their attempt to ruin the train, they were guided by
patriotic motives. They protested against the transit of Russian transit trains
through Lithuania.
The case went to a
drawer, to an archive, and maybe to a landfill.
The second
example. A little later, in 1997, Juras Abromavičius, a former volunteer and
former employee of the Second Department of the Ministry of National Defense,
was killed (blown up in a car). The special services again did not hesitate to
identify all three suspects (one suspect organized everything, another made an
explosive, a third put an explosive under the car). One suspect confessed, shed
light on all the circumstances of the crime and said "it has become easier
for me now".
But again, the
case remained in the prosecutor's office drawer. And again, the suspects turned
out to be patriots, perhaps even bigger than the first bombers. They killed
Abromavičius because he was investigating the blasting of the Bražuolė bridge.
Again, the case did not reach court. And it will never succeed again - too much
time has passed.
The third,
somewhat different, example. Among the striking manifestations of patriotic
justice, in our head, is the case of the Minister of the Interior of the first
government. The Minister was accused of the death (suicide) of the last
so-called partisan of Aukštaitija. In this case, patriotic justice has lost.
But fought long, decisively. The whole process went on or not for seventeen
years. Prosecutors found out almost from the beginning of the investigation and
said that the ex-minister's actions did not constitute a crime. But under
pressure from a large group of patriotic politicians, prosecutors did not stop
the investigation, pace it hopelessly. Until, to click even harder, he cut into
everything, wrote the indictment, and referred the case to court.
Nevertheless, the
courts of all three instances unanimously found the minister innocent. A group
of patriots demanded that the courts be evicted. But no one destroyed them.
However, the claim
that patriotic justice has lost this time can only be accepted in part. The
process lasted a record long. During that time, a lot of slander and gossip was
poured on the head of the accused. It could have harmed human health. Of
course, if he had been convicted and locked up for an extended period of
time, it must be assumed the total man would have finished, but now - not finished.
Then the Professor sighed: to much sympathy for the judges who do not know the history
of Lithuania.
And so another
criterion emerged in the concept of patriotic justice, more significant than
the law itself. It’s a history, history's knowledge.
Over time,
politicians continued to develop the concept of patriotic justice. We would
consider A. Anušauskas to be one of such co-authors of patriotic justice.
Speaking at a conference organized by the Seimas about the legality of some
actions of the participants of the post-war resistance, he stated: "Killed
- means necessary." It was necessary to deal with collaborators in some
way, which, according to Anušauskas himself, was endless in Lithuania, compared
to Latvia, Estonia, and Western Ukraine. While dealing with each other, the
bullet was good enough for non-collaborators as well. War is such a thing. So
we have another new criterion for applying the law - a patriotic affair.
The contribution
of President Dalia Grybauskaitė to the development of the idea of patriotic
justice must also be mentioned. R. Svetikaitė, the President's Chief Legal
Adviser, has set out her position of Her Excellence on this issue in the news radio
show:
“A judge does not live separately, in a separate society, a judge lives
in the same society as all people, where the more important thing than the
letter of the law is the perception of a sense of justice as a
person, society perceives - it is right or it is wrong. A sense of justice is
what allows that President's trust in the courts to be increased or
decreased.” Thus, if a judge clings too tightly to the letter of the law and
loses a sense of justice, he also loses the trust of Her Excellency.
As you know, it
was at that time that the Vilnius Regional Court acquitted the commanders of
OMON (a special purpose Soviet militia unit) accused of war crimes and
genocide. And it happened just at the time when Lithuania was celebrating the
anniversary of the restoration of independence.
The counselor
said: "As we celebrate 25 years of independence, we can each ask ourselves
whether we feel this OMON Commanders' acquittal is the right decision
or whether we feel it is the wrong decision." Of course, we all patriots
in the country feel unequivocally that this is a cruelly wrong decision. But
even more important than our feelings is sense of Her Excellence. In the words
of the counselor, Her Excellence feels that "there can be no justification
or limitation for crimes such as these."
Obviously, the
judges lost their sense of justice. Representatives of a fair sense of justice
could demand that such judges be expelled from the court as Christ drove merchants' goods
out of the sanctuary.
Thus, in addition
to the creative application of the law, in addition to knowing history, in
addition to a sacred cause, there is also a "perception of a sense of
justice" by the president. Those somewhat different-sounding
instruments of law enforcement were merged into one whole - an essential
feature - patriotism. And creativity, and history, and affair, and feeling -
everything has to be patriotic. This one.
Second. All of
these instruments play a key role in law enforcement practice. When, in the meantime,
the letter of the law plays a modest role in the background. Or that poor
letter is left without a role at all, becomes unemployed, and stands in line
waiting for a plate of hot soup.
Now we can return
to Kęstutis' criticism and say: dear Kęstuti, if Tamsta looked at the whole
Paleckis case from the angle of our patriotic justice, you will see that
everything here is chiki chiki. Well, and if you are looking from across the
Atlantic, don’t be fooled if someone calls you the Kremlin’s mouthpiece.
End - thanks
Thanks to the
Singing Revolution, we have moved, from one type of state to another, from an
authoritarian system to a democratic one. But our consciousness, as a very
inert kind of matter, cannot jump so abruptly. It travels from a civilization
where there is a people but no human being to a civilization which, again in
the words of the aforementioned French writer and military pilot, is the
cornerstone of respect for man.
Patriotic justice
is one of the reflections of that our traveling consciousness. It cannot
completely ignore the laws, but neither can it recognize their supremacy. Our
justice is clearly different from the justice of a one-party authoritarian
system, but it is still a long way from justice, strict adherence to the law,
recognizing the priority of the letter of the law over a sense of justice,
against a patriotic understanding of patriotic history, against that sacred
cause, and so on.
Patriotic justice
is not an invention of our country. It is more or less common to all countries
that have escaped from the USSR or from its hard guard. It’s just like a
disease you need to get sick of.
K. Girnius says
that this case is a desecration of justice. But no desecration can arise from
either this or that. There is no pain on a healthy body. The diagnosis is not a
vomit, the diagnosis is a weakened organism. A diagnosis is not a case, a
diagnosis is a set of circumstances that give birth to that case.
We who live in
such justice live with it and therefore do not notice it. Our case of our
non-existent spy network is neither shocking nor exciting. It shocks him.
Because he’s not from here.
Girnius looks
for empathy in Lithuania. You hear, no one has taken to defending Paleckis, who is
being tortured in solitude. Girnius looks at the locked up one in the first place
as a person. That is why he talks about torture and empathy. And only then does
Girnius view the closed person as a suspect, accused, convicted person.
According to Girnius, the latter categories have been assigned to A. Paleckis a
priori, unreasonably.
For us, for the
people from here, the locked up one is first and foremost a suspect from whom a
real spy needs to be landed (although it is already clear to us that it is, but
it is still such a formal requirement). In ours, any empathy for the locked up would
be an exaggerated luxury.
Professor J.
Žilinskas is reluctant to agree with K. Girnius' approach to the suspect held
in solitude ("Desecrated justice?", LRT website, 26 September 2021).
He tends to agree with the arguments put forward by prosecutors and judges,
justifying the placement of A. Paleckis in solitary confinement for a longer
period of time. Professor Žilinskas explains "why law enforcement and the
court reacted so seriously in the pre-trial investigation" (why A.
Paleckis was locked up). "After all, they do not know what exactly was
collected, what was transferred, can communicate what the client can do to the
suspect”. In a word, the court, prosecutors know almost nothing. Therefore, they
will keep Paleckis alone until they learn something. And if you don't know, you will still hold, because maybe you will learn something.
Although he
noticed some strange things in that case, Professor J. Žilinskas doubts whether
it is really a desecration of justice, and tends to the fact that justice is
quite normal here.
J. Žilinskas is
considering the dangers that could have threatened the judges who heard the
case on the thirteenth of January if Paleckis (and Bertauskas) had collected data about them and passed them on to the Russians. What would
have been if it had been, but was not.
Lawyer Žilinskas
cannot agree with Girnius' arguments not because those arguments are incorrect
or doubtful. This is not a problem of arguments. The angles of the approach
stand out here. Girnius looks at the Paleckis case through the window of
Harvard University, Professor Žilinskas through the University of Riomeris.
They see different images. Is this something to argue about?
We can be grateful
to Paleckis, to the SSD, to the prosecutors, to the judges, and to all the
high-ranking politicians, thanks to whom we have this product of co-creation:
not a masterpiece, but an object of the right level. Let’s call it a
performance. That performance, if we do not fully identify with it, if we look
at it from the side, gives us the opportunity to ascertain the travel
coordinates of our consciousness. Traveling from a system where there is no or
almost no justice to a legal system where it prevails - from where we came
from, to where we have not yet come. Knowing the coordinates makes it easier to
navigate the journey. So that would be the social significance of this case,
that would be its benefit. Let’s face it, it’s not that small.
In conclusion, I
would like to personally thank the creative group of this
performance, all the artists, the support staff. As it is practically
impossible to do this (some of the performers are secret), I would like to
thank at least the performer of the main role - the legendary role of the
Russian spy - Algirdas Paleckis. And invite him to a cafe in the old town to
have a cup of coffee. Until he is locked up."
If the letter of law does not mean anything then it is dangerous to be active in Lithuania.
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