Translated material
Crossing the Uy
Kazakhstan returned Russian teenagers illegally detained by lost border guards to their parents
The Karabalyk district court of the Kustanai region of Kazakhstan, as Vremya Novostei learned, released two Russian teenagers involved in a drug smuggling case that became the subject of a border dispute between Russia and Kazakhstan. As the Vremya Novostei newspaper has already reported , residents of the city of Troitsk, Chelyabinsk region, 16-year-old schoolboy Rostislav Norkin and 17-year-old Mikhail Shukshin were detained by Kazakhstan border guards in February near their home in the Uy River area. The friends immediately admitted that they wanted to collect some hemp leaves, which grows everywhere like a weed, to try what it is. But the Kazakh border guards, who detained the teenagers, presented the case in such a way that the young men were malicious and organized drug smugglers and state border violators, for which the young people were arrested and later put on trial.But the reason for the scandal was not drugs at all, but the place where the teenagers were detained - the bank of the Uy River, along which, in fact, the border between the two states runs. Understanding the circumstances of the incident, the friends' parents, and then representatives of the Russian authorities, came to the conclusion that Norkin and Shukshin were detained on Russian territory. That is, we were talking about violation of the state border precisely by Kazakh border guards and the illegal detention of Russian citizens on our territory.
At first, the Kazakh authorities stubbornly insisted on the opposite—that Russian teenagers had sneaked into their territory for the purpose of drug smuggling. But in the end, the trial of the Russians in a Kazakh court ended with the representative of the state prosecution himself abandoning most of the claims against the defendants, and in early June they were released and released to their parents. The criminal case against Shukshin and Norkin ended here. However, the scandal between the authorities of the two countries continued. As Vremya Novostei learned, Russia recently opened a criminal case against Kazakh border guards who illegally entered the territory of the Russian Federation.
Rostislav Norkin and Mikhail Shukshin were detained by Kazakh border guards on the evening of February 12 this year near their home in the vicinity of the town of Troitsk, located right next to the Russian-Kazakh border, on the banks of the Uy River. The teenagers did not hide the fact that they went to the steppe to collect seeds and leaves of hemp sticking out from under the snow. We came up with this trip out of curiosity. However, the Kazakh border guards decided that the young people purposefully and secretly made their way into the territory of Kazakhstan. Norkin and Shukshin were officially detained, taken to a pre-trial detention center, and then the Karabalyk District Department of Internal Affairs opened a criminal case against them. The young people were charged with Art. 250-4 (drug smuggling committed by a group) and Art. 259-4 (illegal manufacture, acquisition, storage, transportation, transfer or sale of narcotic drugs) of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Moreover, each of these articles provides for punishment up to life imprisonment.
In the case materials, the story of Norkin and Shukshin was presented in such a way that they were an organized group of smugglers who tried to deliver a large batch of drugs to Kazakhstan for sale. The investigation insisted that the teenagers were found with not just one package and not at all with seeds and leaves of frozen hemp, but several large packages with already processed marijuana.
Trying to find out what happened to their children, the parents of Norkin and Shukshin, understanding the documents provided to them, suspected that they were not detained in Kazakhstan at all, but on the Russian bank of the Uy River, along which the border runs. And it was the Kazakh border guards who “missed the mark” a little, who, it turned out, not only illegally invaded the territory of the Russian Federation, but seized Russian citizens there. This whole story looked even more outlandish considering the age of the “smugglers” - the Kazakh authorities in all seriousness tried to portray schoolchildren as inveterate criminals, who, in their minds, should have simply, relatively speaking, been flogged and returned home. The version about deliberately crossing the border looked no less strange. The border between Russia and Kazakhstan in the Troitsk area is very conditional - there are no fences or even any warning signs.
Russian border guards joined the proceedings and confirmed the suspicions of the teenagers’ parents about exactly on whose territory Norkin and Shukshin were detained. At first, representatives of the border services of the two countries seemed to agree at meetings that the detention of Norkin and Shukshin was a misunderstanding and the teenagers would be returned home. However, the Kazakh authorities did not do this, and then transferred the criminal case against the teenagers to court.
The hearing of the case began on May 6. The main witnesses for the prosecution were the head of the border service of the Kustanay region, Shagiev, and the border guards who detained the teenagers. Testifying in court, the head of the border service said that the territory where the teenagers were detained belongs to Kazakhstan, and showed a map dated 1983 to prove it. However, the court, at the request of the teenagers' defense, refused to admit this evidence. “There is an official agreement on the position of state borders between Russia and Kazakhstan, signed by President Nursultan Nazarbayev and former Russian President Vladimir Putin on January 18, 2005, but our border guards seem to have not heard about this document,” noted the teenagers’ lawyer Aliya Ramazanova.
According to Ms. Ramazanova, the testimony of the border guards was generally very confusing. “Their testimony in the case did not agree with the testimony in court,” the lawyer said. “The border guards claimed that the teenagers were traveling with drugs from Russia to Kazakhstan, although for some reason the file states that the guys were going to cross back to Russia, and that’s when they were caught.” “One border guard, who was watching the guys from the post, said that he saw them with one bag of grass, two more, who directly caught the guys, tried to convince the judge that there were several such bags,” said the mother of one of the teenagers, Marina Shukshina .
Mikhail Shukshin’s parents, having decided to prove that the “disputed” territory belongs to Russia, as soon as the snow melted, they went to the place of detention with a video camera and filmed the area, and as they expected, no one arrested them for violating the state border. But the video recording was not included in the case. The court also did not satisfy the requests of the lawyers who asked for an on-site trial experiment at the place where the teenagers were detained. The refusal was motivated by the fact that such a procedure was unnecessary. But the teenagers’ defenders and parents suggested that the Kazakh authorities were simply afraid that the participants in the “exit meeting” might be detained by Russian border guards for violating the state border.
Thus, the trial clearly reached a dead end, but at the next meeting on June 2, the state prosecutor himself unexpectedly abandoned most of the claims against Norkin and Shukshin. The prosecutor generally dropped the charge of drug smuggling for lack of evidence, and Art. 250-4 of the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan was reclassified to a softer one - “simple” possession of drugs, without the purpose of sale, large size and organized group. As a result, the court found the teenagers guilty, but, given their minorities, considered it possible not to imprison them and on June 4 released them into the care of their parents. The teenagers' lawyers did not agree with the decision and assured the parents that there was every chance that the children could be acquitted, and they should seek to have the verdict overturned. But the parents, who had lived in anxiety for several months, did not want to continue the litigation. Moreover, according to lawyers, on Russian territory the decision made by the Kazakh court does not play any role.
Already on the evening of June 4, the teenagers returned home and told how everything really happened. “We went out that day to collect hemp leaves to fry them later,” said Rostislav Norkin. — We learned the recipe from friends and, out of curiosity, decided to try it to see if it was tasty or not. It didn’t occur to us that we could be punished for this. We collected one package and came across a mound of grass near a ravine. Someone, apparently, had collected it before us; nearby there were plates and a cup with a strange sediment, as it later turned out, some craftsmen were trying to prepare hashish. The Kazakh border guards sneaked up on us and didn’t notice. When they tried to escape, they threatened that they would shoot us with machine guns. When I found out that I was facing a sentence of 15 years, I was stunned and began to wonder when I would be released.”
As for the proceedings between the authorities of the two countries, they have not yet been completed. Since the Kazakh border guards themselves initially admitted the mistake of their employees, who “missed” the border, but did not immediately return the Russian teenagers, the FSB Directorate for the Chelyabinsk Region opened a criminal case into violation of the Russian border by representatives of the National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan. “A criminal case on this fact has indeed been opened, investigative actions are underway,” the FSB Directorate for the Chelyabinsk Region confirmed to Vremya Novostey.
Now in the Chelyabinsk region, in the area where the teenagers were captured, there are still no warning signs about the passage of the border between Russia and Kazakhstan. “The demarcation is indicated on the basis of the law on the state border, it has already begun and is coming from Astrakhan,” said a representative of the border department of the FSB Directorate for the Chelyabinsk Region. - True, we don’t know exactly when our turn will come. After all, all actions must be coordinated with Kazakhstan. The border with China, for example, was marked for 30 years. Its designation usually looks like this: green and red pillars are placed on the land where it is laid. Our border runs in the middle of the river, and most likely there will be warning messages on the bank. There will definitely be no checkpoints or barbed wires.”