Today it’s not about our colleagues’ best investigations – it’s about persecution. The persecution of the lawyer Ivan Pavlov by the security forces for his professional work to protect the right of journalists to inform the public, and the right of the public to know

The morn­ing starts with the usu­al news — search­es and deten­tions. This time police raid­ed the home of Ivan Pavlov, a well-known lawyer, human rights defend­er and head of the Team 29 (Koman­da 29)– asso­ci­a­tion of lawyers and jour­nal­ists fight­ing for the rights of Russ­ian cit­i­zens to infor­ma­tion access and distribution.

Pavlov has been detained. He is charged with Arti­cle 310 of the RF Crim­i­nal Code (“Dis­clo­sure of data of the pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion”). The penal­ties under this arti­cle are a fine of up to 80,000 rubles or up to 480 hours of com­pul­so­ry work, or cor­rec­tion­al labor for up to two years. A peti­tion has already been pub­lished on the Change.org web­site with a demand to stop the harass­ment of the lawyer and his colleagues.

Ivan Pavlov recent­ly han­dled the case of the jour­nal­ist Ivan Safronov (charged with high trea­son) and the case of Alek­sei Naval­ny’s Anti-Cor­rup­tion Foun­da­tion (FBK) under which the FBK, the Cit­i­zens» Rights Defense Foun­da­tion (FPZG), and Naval­ny’s offices nation­wide could be declared extremist.

And here’s what we, the Com­mu­ni­ty of Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ists — Fond 19/29, think about the Pavlov’s case.

Grig­o­ry Pasko: Ivan Pavlov’s deten­tion was so expect­ed, jour­nal­ists have often asked him in recent inter­views, whether he is afraid they will come after him too. Ivan joked: no need to fall before the gunshot.

The shot rang out.

A hun­dred years ago, I wrote in my sto­ry «The Bis­cuit»: «If you wait — they will come. If you don’t wait — they will come, but unex­pect­ed­ly. And that’s worse, but not fatal. Be pre­pared for the fact that you’ll be tak­en out of bed at night, when you’re a guest, at the kiosk where you buy cig­a­rettes, at the plane ramp (like me), or any­where else. They have a lot of fan­tasies about it «.

They will come after every­one. Do not be fooled.

Why Ivan, it is clear. He’s in the thick of the most high-pro­file court cas­es of the Putin era. Why Arti­cle 310? It’s also clear: in almost all the cas­es in which Pavlov par­tic­i­pates as a defense lawyer, there is a paper with the secre­cy stamp.

I would like to add that (since Ivan Pavlov was my lawyer for many years, and I was able to study his style of work): Ivan is clever and metic­u­lous, the high­est pro­fes­sion­al. And, of course, he knows per­fect­ly well the lim­its of what the “chek­ists” (secret police –ed.) call state secrets. Expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge ALWAYS tell him where, what and how to say, so to com­ply with the FSB claims (no mat­ter absurd), and do every­thing in favor of the client.

The pur­pose of this “a la KGB” secu­ri­ty forces show is to deprive Pavlov of the lawyer sta­tus and to intim­i­date oth­er lawyers, to dri­ve them into the stall with red flags.

Ivan is cer­tain­ly not afraid of all this, but this does not mean that we do not need to help him and his team. As much as we can.

Gali­na Sidoro­va. Ivan Pavlov’s case is cer­tain­ly not a pri­vate case of a lawyer. To be more pre­cise, not just per­son­al — it is clear that every­one has to deal with all of this gov­ern­ment non­sense per­son­al­ly. This is yet anoth­er step in Putin’s planned reprisal against the civ­il soci­ety. Repres­sions are becom­ing both tar­get­ed and mass at the same time. Every day, they come after activists and jour­nal­ists under pre­texts that may seem absurd in the eyes of a nor­mal per­son. Geo­graph­i­cal­ly it hap­pens from Moscow to the very out­skirts of Rus­sia. Now, appar­ent­ly, it’s the turn of the lawyers. Belarus, in my opin­ion, has set an exam­ple for the Krem­lin: most of the inde­pen­dent lawyers there have already been deprived of their licens­es, or are under inves­ti­ga­tion. Of course, there’s noth­ing to be sur­prised about; in a coun­try where there is law and at the same time jus­tice is tram­pled, the law turns into an anti-law. The only hope is that in this sit­u­a­tion, grad­u­al­ly and painful­ly for the soci­ety, the Krem­lin pow­er devours itself.

And, of course, it is our com­mon cause, a mat­ter of hon­or and con­science — to fight for our friend, who put all his pro­fes­sion­al strength and skills to help many of us in exer­cis­ing the right to pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty, and to free­dom, and for our read­ers — to their right to know.

Alex­ei Shlya­puzh­nikov. Lawyers are not hired from the good life. Peo­ple whose com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the out­side world is lim­it­ed by the walls of the cell and the rules of the inter­nal reg­u­la­tions of the Fed­er­al Pen­i­ten­tiary Ser­vice resort to their help. The role of the lawyer is to rep­re­sent the inter­ests of the client not only in court, but wher­ev­er the law, the sit­u­a­tion and com­mon sense require it, includ­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with journalists.

Per­se­cu­tion of lawyers for the per­for­mance of their pro­fes­sion­al duty is unac­cept­able, because in this way the author­i­ties vio­late and actu­al­ly abol­ish the right of sus­pects and defen­dants to a fair defense.

Today’s events are not only an attack on Ivan Pavlov and his team. It’s an act of intim­i­da­tion direct­ed against the entire Russ­ian Bar and the entire Russ­ian jour­nal­ism. The goal of the “silovi­ki” is to destroy com­mu­ni­ca­tion between lawyers and the media by instill­ing fear. Fear and intim­i­da­tion can only be resist­ed togeth­er, and we urge all lawyers and jour­nal­ists to join our demand for an imme­di­ate end to the per­se­cu­tion and the release of Ivan Pavlov.