Translated material
"Deserved"
Major Evsyukov sentenced to life imprisonment
Yesterday, on the fifth day after Denis Evsyukov was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Moscow City Court, neither party appealed the court verdict. Although the intention to do this was announced by the lawyers of the ex-chief of the capital’s Tsaritsyno police department, who shot visitors to a supermarket in the south of Moscow in April 2009.At a hearing last Friday, the court found Yevsyukov guilty of murdering two people, attempting to murder 22 more, attempting to kill four police officers and illegally carrying weapons and ammunition. The court also satisfied two civil claims from the victims and issued a private ruling to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rashid Nurgaliev, to “eliminate the circumstances that contributed to the commission of the crime.” The victims in the case and the public greeted the court's verdict with satisfaction and approval. The judges’ verdict to their former employee and the Moscow City Internal Affairs Directorate was called “correct and fair.”
The announcement of the verdict took the head of the judicial troika, Dmitry Fomin, about two hours, during which he listed in detail all the atrocities of the major. Evsyukov, who appeared in the courtroom without the usual stylish beard that he grew in prison, was calm as usual and, avoiding the gaze of the victims, looked somewhere at the floor.
Mr. Fomin read out many certificates from medical institutions about the hospitalization of people wounded by the major, read out the testimony of some witnesses, in particular the ex-head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, Major General Vladimir Pronin, as well as the defendant himself. As a result, the court found untenable the defense version that Evsyukov could have taken the pistol from which he shot at the store’s visitors from the driver who gave him a lift, Sergei Evteev, whom he also shot. “No data confirming this was presented to the court,” Mr. Fomin noted. As follows from the verdict, Evsyukov had the intent to kill people, and the crime was not completed for reasons beyond his control - some victims managed to escape, while others were provided with timely medical assistance. The verdict also noted that Evsyukov acted in a “generally dangerous manner” in the presence of a significant number of people, “disregarding the norms of morality and morality.”
According to the case file, on the night of April 27, 2009, Major Evsyukov, being drunk, first shot and killed private driver Sergei Evteev, who was driving him to the Ostrov supermarket on Shipilovskaya Street, and then opened fire on people in the trading floor. He also offered armed resistance to the police officers who arrived at the scene, who, avoiding casualties, managed to detain him. In total, Evsyukov was charged under four articles of the Criminal Code, including the murder of two people and the attempt on the lives of 26 others, seven of whom were wounded.
The court, based on the results of a psychological and psychiatric examination, found Evsyukov sane - during the attack he spoke with the victims, and then with the police officers who detained him, and was not in a state of passion. Also, Mr. Fomin was very skeptical about the words of Evsyukov himself that he did not remember how he committed his crimes.
According to the court, there are no aggravating circumstances in the case, and the positive characteristics of the defendant, his awards and positive reviews from witnesses were taken into account as mitigating factors. “Since Evsyukov poses a particular danger to society, the court decided to find him guilty and sentence him to life imprisonment in a special regime colony,” said Dmitry Fomin. According to the court decision, Evsyukov was found guilty of all charges brought against him, with the exception of the charge of “illegal trafficking in weapons.” Since during the investigation it was not clear how Evsyukov got his hands on a Makarov pistol, stolen earlier in the Rostov region from a police warehouse, the court eventually removed the acquisition of this pistol from the qualifying criteria under the article “illegal arms trafficking.”
The court also satisfied both civil claims filed in the case. As a result, the Rigla pharmacy chain will be compensated for a little more than 4.8 thousand rubles. for a closet door broken by a stray bullet and spoiled anti-cellulite preparations, and Evteev’s common-law wife Olga Pogonina will receive over 120 thousand rubles. for repairing a car damaged by gunfire. The court also ordered the car to be returned to the owner. In addition, the court issued a private ruling addressed to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rashid Nurgaliev, demanding “to eliminate the conditions that contributed to the repetition of the crimes committed by Yevsyukov.” In this case, we are talking about the previously stolen pistol from which Evsyukov fired, as well as about cartridges, which, being in the arsenal of the capital’s Central Internal Affairs Directorate, must be strictly accounted for.
After the end of the meeting, the major’s defense attorney, Tatyana Bushueva, announced that she would appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court of Russia, for which, by law, she has ten days, which are calculated from the moment she receives a copy of the verdict. However, as of yesterday, neither the major himself nor his lawyer had yet filed complaints with a higher authority. “At the moment, Evsyukov’s sentence has not been appealed,” Anna Usacheva, press secretary of the Moscow City Court, said yesterday.
The Moscow Central Internal Affairs Directorate considered the sentence to its former employee, because of which the head of the department, Vladimir Pronin, was dismissed, to be adequate. The head of the information and public relations department of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, Viktor Biryukov, said that the punishment for the major was “correct and fair.” “Of course, Evsyukov suffered a well-deserved punishment, and the court decision was initially quite predictable,” Mr. Biryukov noted, adding that “of course, people like Evsyukov have no place in the internal affairs bodies.”
The State Duma was also pleased with the verdict of Major Evsyukov. Chairman of the Security Committee Vladimir Vasiliev said that Yevsyukov “received fairly according to the law and conscience.” “This sentence is fair according to the expectations of society, because Yevsyukov committed a crime that goes beyond the scope of an ordinary crime,” Mr. Vasiliev said. - Evsyukov crossed the line and got the maximum, and this is absolutely fair. This was expected, and this is a case where the law is perceived positively by most of society, as far as I can tell.” The head of the Committee on Civil, Criminal, Arbitration and Procedural Legislation, Pavel Krasheninnikov, also said that Evsyukov “got what he deserved”: “This is the only correct verdict. Evsyukov in other countries would have received several life sentences or more than a hundred years in prison.”
A similar opinion is shared in the Public Chamber. Member of the chamber, leader of the Resistance movement Olga Kostina noted that “this verdict is justified.” “Of course, he is harsh, but we have never known such shocks. This was a daring crime committed by a law enforcement officer, for which he must be held accountable,” she said. The decision of the Moscow City Court was also approved by the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Vladimir Lukin, who stated that he considered the sentence to Evsyukov fair. “The verdict is not a reason for any special comments, joy or satisfaction. Therefore, I can say just one word - deserved it,” said Mr. Lukin.
In turn, the president of the Moscow Bar Association, Henry Reznik, noted that, as an outside observer of this trial, he did not come to a clear conclusion about Evsyukov’s motivation. “For me, Evsyukov’s motivation remains unclear. It seems to me that his consciousness was still clouded, otherwise I don’t understand his actions in relation to completely innocent victims,” he said.
It is expected that the decision of the Moscow City Court will become the starting point for new appeals to the courts by victims with claims for compensation for moral and physical suffering. Victim advocates believe that after the major’s sentence, the chances of a positive outcome of such appeals have increased significantly.
It is worth noting that even before the start of the trial of Evsyukov, the Nagatinsky District Court of Moscow refused to satisfy the claims of two victims for compensation. In July 2009, seriously wounded Major Ilya Gerasimenko unsuccessfully tried to get the state to pay 5 million rubles, and in September the court rejected similar claims in the amount of 4.5 million from Luiza Salikhova, who also received several gunshot wounds on the night of April 27 . The defendants in both lawsuits were the Russian Ministry of Finance, the Federal Treasury and the Department of Finance of the Moscow Government. The court then came to the conclusion that at the time of the crime Evsyukov was not in the service, which means that the victims should demand compensation not from the state, but from him personally.