Deputy Prosecutor-General: Zakayev case is criminal but not political

There must not be any political assessments at a trial on the case of extradition of the Chechen militants' emissary Ahmed Zakayev to Russia, Deputy Prosecutor-General of the Russian Federation Sergei Fridinsky told journalists on Monday before the beginning of a new stage of the hearings of this case. "The only question is extradition of the accused who, as we believe, must stand trial in a Russian court for deciding the question of his being guilty or innocent of committing concrete crimes," he noted. According to him, "there is no politics in this case, there are no nationalities in this case, in this case the matter concerns only concrete crimes, a concrete man who, as the investigation believes, committed them." Fidinsky explained that the purpose of the whole activity of the prosecution side is that "the court would understand and have a clear idea of the fact that the matter does not concern a Nuremberg trial in connection with Zakayev's case but only a criminal case and extradition of this man." Fridinsky heads a small group of specialists of the Prosecutor-General's Office of the Russian Federation which, at the request of the Crown Prosecution Service of Great Britain, arrived in London for consultations on carrying on a trial on extradition of Zakayev to Russian justice.