Alexander Golovenko: Slanderous report about Chechen terrorist on trial to marry his own lawyer

Oleg Lurye – an observer in The New Newspaper reported on the touchy feelings between Tupal-Ali Atgeriyev, who is on trial together with Chechen terrorist Salman Raduyev, and his lawyer Leila Khamzayeva. In his November 26 article, Lurye wrote that Atgeriyev suddenly fell in love, got permission for marriage, and married his own lawyer, Leila Khamzayeva: “The marriage in the cell was proof of the real feelings between the defendant and the lawyer.”

“I am a professional lawyer and pursuant to the request from my father, I really was Atgeriyev’s lawyer for a certain period of time, until he was rendered the permanent one," - Leila said to a PRAVDA.Ru correspondent. "However, of course, I never married him either in jail or in any other place, and I have never had any feelings of love towards him. This was slander from The New Newspaper. I and my father are going to reject this information at court."

As Leila thinks, this information was not incidental. First of all, her father, Abdullah Khamzayev, sent her to the Strasbourg court for human rights, asking to levy $200 thousand from the Russian Federation; this is the price to compensate for the material and moral damage, namely the destruction of their house in the Chechen town of Urus-Martan. To all appearances, Leila will be representing his interests in court and there are no doubts that they will win the process. Secondly, Leila and her father were defending the interests of the aggrieved party in the city of Rostov-on-Don (the litigation concerns Yury Budanov, the Russian colonel who is charged of killing a Chechen girl, Elza Kungayeva). It has been recently discovered at the center of psychological expertise that the colonel choked the girl being of sound mind, not due to the state of temporary insanity, as it was supposed earlier. Therefore, the Khamzayevs consider the insinuation from The New Newspaper as an attempt to take them out of the emotional balance and to compromise them with the cognation with the terrorist. Moreover, the Khamzayevs believe it was not only stupid slander, it was more of a threat from those who are not happy about their successful legal activities.

AP photo: Chechen seperatist rebel leader Salman Raduyev, left, and one of his co-defendants Turpal Atgeriyev sit in a defendant's cell during a break in the trial in Makhachkala, southern Russia, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2001