ULLMAN'S CASE LIVES

COURT YES CASE

The military collegium of the Supreme Court, considering on August 30 the cassation appeal against the acquittal of the North Caucasian military court in the case of the shooting and burning of six people by GRU special forces in January 2002 in Chechnya, returned everything ...

On August 30, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, considering the cassation appeal against the acquittal of the North Caucasian Military Court in the case of the shooting and burning of six people by GRU special forces in January 2002 in Chechnya, returned everything to a new round of consideration, considering the verdict illegal. The main claims of the cassation instance: gross procedural violations in the formation of the jury and the behavior of the judge, who allowed himself to give political instructions to the jury.

The essence of the acquittal: yes, the fighters of the GRU detachment killed and burned the unfortunate, but they were not guilty, because they were following the order of their superiors. In the course of previous trials, no attention was paid to the fact that the order, in fact, was not such, no papers, but only allegorical hints of an obscure leader of the operation, sounded on the radio.

What will happen now?

The victims - the families of the burned residents of the Shatoisky district of Chechnya - will experience at least a few weeks of peace from the justice that has triumphed at that moment. Until a new review. And it will be the third in a row - and just as painful. Because, alas, it is again scheduled to take place in Rostov-on-Don. But strong anti-Chechen sentiments are a fact of South Russian reality.

So why is the verdict overturned? After all, the Supreme Court, as very often happens, "does not notice" what should not be noticed?

It seems that the decree of August 30 is a reaction to the president's phrase. It is widely known that when meeting with human rights activists at the beginning of the summer, the President put it this way: he was “shocked” by the justification of Ulman and his accomplices.

So the Supreme Court made its decision.

Be that as it may, the GRU, perhaps, will be cooled down a little and for a short time. After all, the special forces of this organization continue their "sanitary" activities in Chechnya, as Ulman and his detachment did. And the fact that there are no high-profile cases in everyday life is only because you personally have not heard about them. The cleansing case in the village of Borozdinovskaya (June 4) is also GRU (we wrote a lot about this). The case of the murder of Abdul-Azim Yangulbaev, head of the administration of the mountain village Zumsa (July 4), belongs to the same category.

Let me remind you. The UAZ, on which the head was riding, was stopped by three armed men in masks, who showed GRU certificates, demanded to get out of the car and show documents. When Yangulbaev was ordered to open the trunk for inspection, the killers shot him three times at point-blank range with a weapon with a silencer. The murder was the result of the most difficult relationship between Yangulbaev and the Grushnikovs, which developed over the past six months. Four people were abducted in Zumsoy in January. This was done by a group of military men who landed from helicopters (nothing is known about all four). Abdul-Azim Yangulbaev tried with all his might to find the kidnapped fellow villagers - he openly opposed the arbitrariness of the military. What now happens in Chechnya is not often.

In the spring, it was he who handed over to the Memorial Society and the prosecutor's office a draft report of one of the fighters of the 621st RGSpN (special reconnaissance group) operating in the village in January. There were the names of those who commanded a group of kidnapping officers, it was said about the shelling of houses, the murder of one of the residents.

So the Ulman case, as it developed over more than three years until August 30, only sentenced new people to be shot by the GRU. Will this end? After all, the GRU is the president's area of ​​personal responsibility, isn't it?