In an op-ed co-authored with Gonzalo Boye, William Julié spoke out about the sentencing of one of his clients, Evghenia Gutul, the elected governor of the autonomous region of Gagauzia (Moldova), to seven years in prison for illegal campaign financing.
This case, which comes in the context of Moldova’s accession process to the European Union, has several characteristics of a political trial, marked by the abusive use of the argument of Russian interference to circumvent fundamental procedural guarantees and conceal political motivations.
This political motivation results in serious violations of Evghenia Gutul’s fundamental rights of defence and right to a fair trial, such as disregard for the presumption of innocence, the lack of impartiality and independence of the judges, restrictions on access to the case file, and the systematic rejection of the arguments put forward by the defence, in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.