Kross: Lawyer Ditch Meaningless, Kohver Will Be Found Guilty
The security expert and current IRL politician Eerik-Niiles Kross said captured ISS official Eston Kohver's decision to drop his Estonian state-hired lawyers will have little effect as the chance that justice will prevail in a Russian court is minute.
“There is no reason to believe justice will come up on top in Russian court proceedings, ruling him to be innocent and giving him back,” Kross told Delfi on Wednesday.
He said it hard to decipher what the decision to waive legal help means, and hard to tell if and how the FSB has influenced him in the past two weeks.
Kross said he would not be surprised if Kohver will at some point admitted to being on Russian territory during the capture. “If for example a person has been imprisoned by the Taliban and we are shown a video where he says sharia laws have been dear to him since childhood, then it might not be truthful.”
The solution can only be political, Kross said, adding that international pressure must be kept high and Kohver must be signaled that he is being supported, as one aim of the captures is to sow confusion in him.
Kross, who is politically exposed and played an advisory role in Georgia around the time of the Russian invasion in 2008, is himself a subject of attempts by Russian authorities to bring him in for questioning as a person of interest in a "ship hijack" case the West views as unfounded.