Open-mouthed crowds in Moscow's Supreme Court sat hour after hour last week on uncomfortable wooden benches while Soviet prosecutors and judges in ill-fitting business suits wove one of Red Russia's most exciting murder cases around the shifty-eyed figure of Konstantin Semenchuk, 49, for the past two years Governor of Wrangel Island. Murder is not a very serious crime in Russia, carrying a maximum penalty of only ten years imprisonment. Horrified as the testimony piled up against Semenchuk, prosecutors quickly changed the charge to "banditry," i.e., willful destruction of Soviet property, for which...
RUSSIA: Crazy Governor
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