The court did not believe the printer

Accused of attacking Khimki administration released on his own recognizance

The investigation into the criminal case initiated after the July pogrom of the Khimki administration has reached a dead end. Yesterday, the Khimki City Court unexpectedly changed the preventive measure for one of the two people accused of attacking the city administration. Maxim Solopov, who was in custody for two and a half months, was released on his own recognizance; law enforcement officers were unable to find legal grounds for re-extending his arrest. Another accused of the pogroms, Alexey Gaskarov, is still in jail, but his associates are already preparing to meet their friend.

The release of a man who participated in such a loud and provocative attack on public authorities can only be considered a surprise. If in the first days after the hooligan act of the radicals in Khimki, investigators could count on the favor of the city judges, who granted all the prosecution’s requests without exception, then several months later the groundlessness of the anti-fascists’ stay in the pre-trial detention center became obvious even by the standards of Russian legal proceedings. Khimki investigators have finally exhausted the limit of trust of angry officials, and this was clearly demonstrated when the Moscow Regional Court one by one declared illegal the decisions of the Khimki City Court, which at the end of September extended the arrests of Solopov and Gaskarov for another two months.

Let us recall that the left-wing radicals were arrested a few days after a group of anti-fascists and anarchists threw fireworks, painted with spray paint and fired at the Khimki administration building with traumatic pistols. On August 3, the Khimki City Court arrested Gaskarov and Solopov for two months, and at the end of September extended their detention for a similar period. Companions of the young people and their lawyers have been insisting for several months that Solopov and Gaskarov, who are charged under Art. 213 part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (hooliganism by prior conspiracy), innocent, allegedly they were arrested only because they were the most public people in the antifa movement.

According to Solopov’s lawyer Yuri Eronin, at yesterday’s hearing the prosecution did not present a single new justification for extending the arrest of the anti-fascist. “They (the investigators - Ed. ), as before, brought six photographs printed on a bad printer, which supposedly depict Maxim,” the defense lawyer said in a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent. In addition, the prosecution, as before, insisted that the anti-fascist could escape justice. Lawyer Eronin is confident that a similar decision can be expected in relation to Alexei Gaskarov. But at the same time, he is in no hurry to claim that his clients’ case has fallen apart. “In Russia there is no point in making any assumptions. It often happens in our country that nonsense takes the form of law, and law takes the form of nonsense,” noted Mr. Eronin.

Maxim Solopov himself considers the circumstances of his arrest and the actions of the investigation against him illegal. “From my own example and the example of those with whom I sat, I became convinced that the law enforcement system in Russia has completely collapsed,” he told Vremya Novostei yesterday.

Vyacheslav KOZLOV