The Kotlyakov case has found a second wind

The Presidium of the Supreme Court overturned the acquittal of Valery Radchikov

One of the most high-profile cases of recent years - the explosion at the Kotlyakovsky cemetery in the capital in November 1996 - was continued yesterday. The Presidium of the Supreme Court of Russia, having considered the protest of the country's chief military prosecutor Mikhail Kislitsin against the acquittal verdict pronounced by the Moscow Military District Court on January 21 of this year, overturned this verdict and sent the case for a new investigation. Let us recall that three people - Valery Radchikov, Andrei Anokhin and Mikhail Smurov - were brought to trial on charges of an explosion at a cemetery, which killed 14 people and injured dozens. After the acquittal, they were released in the courtroom.

According to the investigation conducted by the Prosecutor General's Office, the cause of the terrorist attack was commercial disagreements within the movement of veterans of the war in Afghanistan. The explosion at the cemetery itself was organized at a time when a wake was being held there for the chairman of the Foundation for Disabled Persons of the War in Afghanistan, Mikhail Likhodei, who was killed in 1994. During the explosion, among others, the then chairman of this foundation, Sergei Trakhirov, was killed.

In May 1997, the Prosecutor General's Office arrested Valery Radchikov, the first chairman of the Afghanistan War Disabled Foundation, accusing him of organizing the explosion. A month later, former “Afghans” Andrei Anokhin and Mikhail Smurov were arrested, who, according to the investigation, manufactured, planted and detonated a bomb in the cemetery. In December 1998, the investigation into the criminal case of the explosion at the Kotlyakovskoye cemetery was sent to the Moscow District Court. Court hearings lasted from April 1999 to January 2000. During this time, more than a hundred witnesses were heard at the trial. The state prosecutor asked to sentence Radchikov to 12 years in prison, and Anokhin and Smurov to 15 and 10 years.

But judge Valery Serdyukov acquitted all the accused, recognizing their guilt as unproven. One of the reasons for this judge's decision was the discrepancy between the materials of two examinations of the remains of an explosive device - the judicial one and the one carried out during the preliminary investigation. The prosecution considered such conclusions of the court to be unproven and sent a petition to overturn the decision of the district military court to the Supreme Court. On June 25, the military panel of the Supreme Court confirmed the acquittal. However, yesterday the Presidium of the Supreme Court canceled it and sent the cases for additional investigation, saying that the preliminary investigation and trial by the Moscow Military Court were not carried out in full, without considering all the circumstances of the case.

According to a representative of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, a new investigation into the case of the explosion at the Kotlyakovsky cemetery will be entrusted to another investigator (previously it was handled by Vladimir Danilov).

Alexander RASKIN