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Russia

The hon. Gentleman is putting forward some interesting suggestions, but does he share my concern about the quality and independence of the Russian judiciary? Does he recognise the comments of the chairman of the Russian constitutional court, which were reported in Izvestiya in October 2004? He said that"““the country’s judicial system is in many aspects worse now than it was in the Soviet era””," and that, in reality, people who try to take a case to the European Court of Human Rights, for example, find that mysteriously their legal advisers are arrested or disappear. As a result they are intimidated when trying to take such cases forward. How can we have any confidence in a justice system that is so manipulative?