Russians solve crimes, too. Is it necessary for prosecutors and police officers to have Russian language skills?

Many criminals do not speak their native language very well, and international human rights require that communication with the accused must be in a language he understands. The same is true for me, if I were to fall in Italy and try to damage the Colosseum in Rome, I could ask for the indictment to be issued in Latvian, and they would be forced to find a translator in Italy. The only difference is that in Latvia this would not be challenging, because in some institutions conducting criminal prosecutions it is even possible to employ entire departments whose employees are tasked with translating interrogation texts and documents related to the case from Latvian into Russian and vice versa.

For example, the Prosecutor’s Office in Riga East has such a unit. Its Deputy Chief Prosecutor Edijs Pastars admitted to Delfi that the unit uses translation services in about half of its cases because the defendants do not know the native language well enough. The Prosecutor’s Office has a total of 33 translators whose daily work is to translate case materials from Russian into Latvian and vice versa.

A judge in Delphi says that there are cases where it is clearly understood – testimony is given in Russian but immediately written down in Latvian, without translation or interpretation. In such cases, the defendant can appeal to the fact that he did not understand anything. “If a person gives testimony in Russian and writes it down in Russian, there is no problem.