Criminal case opened in arrest of Russian man who was found beheaded after speaking out about being framed on drug charges

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case to search for officials who may have abused their authority in the prosecution of Dmitry Fyodorov, an Omsk musician who was found dead after he publicly said police had planted drugs on him.

Omsk City Council Deputy Dmitry Petrenko, whom Fyodorov contacted for help before his death, published the order opening the new case on his Telegram channel. The document does not appear on the website for the Investigative Committee’s Omsk branch.

The order posted by Petrenko indicates that charges were actually compiled in January of 2020 to be brought against employees of the Russian National Guard’s external security branch and Omsk’s seventh police division. No individual suspects have yet been identified.

Dmitry Fyodorov, 25, was labeled a suspect in a drug distribution case in December 2019. Fyodorov said that Russian National Guard members had framed him in the case, while police officers forced him to confess to creating secret stashes of narcotics. One week later, Fyodorov’s corpse was found decapitated next to a railroad track. While his death was officially labeled a suicide, the musician’s family and friends believe he may have been killed and then transported to the railroad.

A demonstration in Fyodorov’s memory took place in Omsk in January 2020. Protesters demanded that Fyodorov’s case and his death be thoroughly investigated.