Chairman of the Nizhegorodsky District Court, Ms. Golubeva has studied the address of the Interregional Committee Against Torture asking her to deal with federal judge Pyryev´s unethical behaviour.

   The Nizhegorodsky District Court has replied to the address of the ICAT sent upon the results of the hearing of 29 June 2010 under the case about tortures by the police, known as the case of Alexey Yakimov. You may remember that on that day federal judge Pyryev denied representatives of Nizhny Novgorod and federal mass media access to a public hearing, i.e. closed the hearing, in a blatantly rude fashion. Later, already without mass media, he postponed proclamation of the verdict under the case to 22 July 2010 without giving any reason for that. Specialists of the ICAT sent an address to the chairman of the district court asking her to consider the actions of Mr. Pyryev.

Ms. Golubeva studied the address and concluded that, judge Pyryev had acted “absolutely lawfully”, though “incorrectly¨, and “there were no grounds to impose disciplinary punishment on him”.

As a result, the chairman wagged the finger at judge Pyryev and reproached him for his incorrect behavior in respect of mass media.  Together with Ms. Golubeva we can only hope that this reproach will become an effective instrument to combat judge Pyryev’s unethical and contemptuous attitude towards public interests.