Defendant’s Illness Leads Judge to Suspend Russia Coup Leaders’ Trial
Russia’s Supreme Court indefinitely suspended the trial of the alleged ringleaders of the August, 1991, coup Friday because one of the 12 defendants is ill.
The die-hard Communists who briefly seized power from Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev argued that the trial could not continue without Alexander I. Tizyakov, 67, who was rushed from the courtroom with heart trouble on Wednesday, the opening day of the trial.
The presiding judge, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Ukolov, said the court would decide when to resume the trial after it received a medical report on Tizyakov, who is at a military hospital in Moscow. The medical report will determine whether he is truly too sick to defend himself.
Before the coup, Tizyakov headed an association of state factories in the former Soviet Union. The other defendants include some of the most powerful men of the old regime: former KGB chief Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, onetime Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov, ex-Soviet Parliament Chairman Anatoly I. Lukyanov and former Vice President Gennady I. Yanayev.
They are accused of placing Gorbachev under house arrest and grabbing power on Aug. 18-21, 1991, in an attempt to preserve the Soviet Union under hard-line Communist rule. However, the failed coup accelerated the country’s breakup.
If the defendants are found guilty, they could face the death penalty.
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