MOSCOW: Secret documents’ have been cited in Russian-occupied Crimea to justify holding the trial of Yevhen Panov behind closed doors. Since no secret material was ever mentioned to either Panov or his lawyer, this may well simply be the latest attempt to conceal the lack of any substance to the charges against the Ukrainian.
It will not be the first time. Panov was held for two months without access to a lawyer after being seized and tortured in August 2016 and has been under massive pressure ever since to plead ‘guilty’ to concocted charges.
Speaking after the hearing, Panov’s lawyer Dmitry Dinze explained that they had been suddenly told that the material includes a ‘secret volume’. If there really are such ‘state secrets’, then the investigator has committed a crime by not telling either Dinze or his client, and Panov could certainly have passed such information on to his family.
Dinze was also asked to sign a non-disclosure undertaking but refused on the grounds that there are no state secrets involved. He later told Hromadske Radio that the ‘secret volume’ is supposedly about the sites where the alleged ‘acts of sabotage’ were supposedly planned.
