17. Speak individually or arrange a discussion on the following.

• Sometimes homicides are not punishable.

• Police officers may be justified in taking the life of criminals.

• The escaped prisoner had to be shot dead to prevent the commission of an atrocious crime.

Case study

18. Scrutinize these reports published with a four-year interval in “Time” and “The Moscow Times” describing the same sensational gloomy case.

Identify key points in the articles and extract information from them to pass on to somebody else.

Provide detailed and motivated answers to the questions given below.

I

CEMETERY CARNAGE

Lyudmila Gorshkova, a pensioner on her way to the bakery, watched the somber procession in tears. “My God,” she asked, “when will the madness stop?” Her despair was widely shared. The sidewalks were lined with stunned Muscovites, as the long trail of veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan marched slowly by, bearing the cas­kets of seven comrades. They had not fallen in some far-off land but had been savagely ambushed by a bomb at a Moscow cemetery on November 10. Hidden un­der a table laden with vodka for toasts and triggered by remote control, the device exploded during a memorial at the grave of Mikhail Likhodei, the head of an Afghan veterans' association who was murdered in 1994. In all, the blast at the Kotlyakovskoye cemetery took 14 lives and injured dozens. Among the suspects: a rival veterans' group competing for funding.

Muscovites are used to gangland slayings, but the massacre still shocked Russian society. Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin denounced it as “a ter­rorist act”. Interior Minister Anatoli Kulikov, angered that the an­nual Police Day had been ruined, vowed to bring the “scum” to jus­tice. But the attack is only the lat­est in a series of sensational crimes that remain unsolved. Last year the number of murders in Russia doubled, to 31,000. Of the 560 killings in 1995 officially identified as contract hits, police have solved only 60.

“No one will ever pay for this horror” Gorshkova said, echoing the bleak prediction of many Russians who see their body politic riddled with institutionalized corruption. Last week the attacked veterans' group accused Yuri Yarov, an aide to Boris Yeltsin's chief of staff, Anatoli Chubais, of involve­ment. As is usual in Russia these days, the dispute concerns money. In 1993 the veterans' group was exempted from import taxes. Profits from its commercial enterprises were to go to its members, but the money disappeared. Law-enforcement officials say the veterans siphoned off the cash. The Afghan vets claim they were duped, Andrei Chepumoi, a former commando and the group's new chairman, says he and two colleagues confronted Yarov in 1994 with docu­ments bearing me latter’s signature. The financial papers proved, Chepumoi claims, that “someone was tunneling huge amounts of cash through our foun­dation”. Yarov denies any involvement in the alleged diversion, while Chepurnoi is the only vet at the meeting still alive. Likhodei was blown up within months, and his successor, Sergei Trakhirov, died in Sunday's blast.

Chepurnoi's charges may never make to it court, and the bombers may never be caught. But for most Russians, one verdict is already in. The mas­sacre is perhaps the most gory, macabre proof to date of the corrosive power of money—and the impunity Russian criminals enjoy [6].

Questions:

1. Why was Lyudmila Gorshkova in despair?

2. What happened at the Kotlyakovskoye cemetery on November 10, 1996?

3. How many people died in Sunday’s blast?

4. Was the deliberation or "malice aforethought" present in this massacre?

5. What degree murder would this crime be classified under most American statutes?

6. Why was Interior Minister Anatoli Kulikov beyond himself with rage?

7. What did A. Kulikov vow to do?

8. What have Muscovites got already used to?

9. Do you think Russian criminals really enjoy impunity?

10. Have the bombers been caught now that three and a half years have already passed?

11. Why did this crime remain unsolved?