"This sentence is no more legal than the first. When a man is innocent, it doesn't matter that he is given one year instead of three," Orekhov's lawyer, Andrei Rakhmelovich, said after Monday's ruling.
The court considering Orekhov's appeal reduced his sentence based on a technicality. A new version of Russia's law on the illegal possession of weapons, which raised the recommended sentence to three to five years, came into effect only after he had been arrested. The court ruled that he should serve one year, as stipulated in the former law.
Orekhov was arrested May 11 after his car was stopped for a traffic violation. A gun was found in his pocket and he was later sentenced to three years in prison. At his trial, which lasted only 15 minutes, Orekhov protested that the pistol was broken and did not belong to him.
It has been widely suspected that the severity of Orekhov's original sentence owed to his status as a dissident KGB officer. Orekhov served eight years in prison camps from 1978 to 1986 for aiding the very dissidents he was assigned to follow.
"The severity of the sentence is explained only by the identity of Viktor Orekhov, and by the fact that this whole case was falsified from the very beginning," Valeria Novodvorskaya, coordinator of the Democratic Union of Russia, said before Monday's ruling.
Orekhov's supporters maintain that his harsh sentencing was a direct result of an interview he gave in Express Khronika last March, in which he made disparaging remarks about the man who had prosecuted him in 1978 and who is now the No. 2 in the FSB -- General Anatoly Trofimov.
"This [case]," said Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch Helsinki, "clearly bears the stamp of the FSB."
Rakhmelovich was more guarded, but his conclusion was similar. "There may be political motives here, but the tragedy lies in the fact that this case is typical. People end up in prison camps in just this way who have no political significance. Soviet justice is at work, that's all. Nothing has changed."
Orekhov's wife, Nadezhda, appeared steeled for a long fight after the reduced-sentence ruling. "We are not going to sit on our hands. Orekhov is innocent, and we will do everything to return his liberty to him."
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