Attack’ on Yeltsin Aide’s Car Just a DUI Case Russia: A drunken barber is blamed for crash involving lawyer handling Communist Party trial. Fears of political motive had reflected jittery nerves
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Alexei Smirnov, the 27-year-old director of a Moscow hair salon, confessed to police that he was the culprit whose small blue sedan had barreled into the car carrying Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s chief lawyer, the Interfax news agency reported. With the confession, the car crash settled back into the realm of the mundane, but the furor it had caused for several days reflected widespread fears, particularly among skittish members of Yeltsin’s government, that Russian Communists intent on restoring their former regime may resort to old-style dirty tricks. Attention turned immediately to the Communists, who are Shakhrai’s legal opponents in the special trial now under way in Russia’s Constitutional Court over the legality of the Communist Party and whether Yeltsin had the right to ban it. Yeltsin himself has said the trial is so crucial that the political fate of the nation could depend on it. Source : pqasb.pqarchiver.com |