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How terrorist attacks are uncovered in Russia

The crash of the "Nevsky Express" killed 27 people Find the enemy. Over the past six months, according to the FSB, there have been 169 terrorist attacks in Russia, two times less than in the same period last year. The Russian special services quarterly report on the capture of the perpetrators, but the methods used by the security forces raise doubts: are there real or imaginary terrorists in the dock? How terrorist attacks are uncovered in Russia - The New Times learned On September 12, the trial of the Nevsky Express train bombing on November 27, 2009 begins in the Tverskoy Regional Court. There are ten people in the dock: nine with the surname Kartoev (three brothers, six namesakes) and Zelimkhan Aushev. All of them are residents of the Ingush village of Ekazhevo, where on March 2-3, 2010, a large-scale special operation was carried out to capture Alexander Tikhomirov, known under the nickname Said Buryatsky.

Back in 2008, they started talking about Said Buryatsky as a terrorist. It was he, according to the intelligence services, who planned and carried out the bombing of the Nevsky Express in November 2009. During a special operation in Ekazhev, a terrorist was killed, and four of the Kartoev brothers were killed (there were seven in total).

At the same time, ten residents of the village were also detained, now accused of involvement in the assembly and transportation of an improvised explosive device, with which the train was blown up. Soon they were placed in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center. There, one of them, Murat Kartoev, met with The New Times correspondent. Kartoev said that he was taken to Tver for investigative actions and there they were forced to admit his guilt. “They put a plastic bag over their heads and beat them,” Kartoev said. “But I have nothing to confess, I didn’t do it.” Lawyer Musa Pliyev, who defends Timur Kartoev, told The New Times that almost all of the defendants refused to testify during the investigation.

„

First they beat me, then they stopped, they forced me to grow a mustache and a beard. The guards said to each other: “Here we will have our own suicide bomber”

”

“This position is understandable,” explains Pliev. - They are sure of their innocence, and they simply have nothing to say. At the trial, they will answer questions from the parties. But the fact is that none of them knew Said Buryatsky and was not a member of his gang, as they are accused of it.

According to the lawyer, there are no face-to-face confrontations or testimonies of witnesses in the case file that would confirm the version of the investigation about the involvement of the Kartoevs and Aushev in undermining the Nevsky Express and preparing this terrorist attack.

The indictment says that the explosive device was collected and transported by Tukhan Kartoev, who was killed during the special operation. Those who remained alive "picked up components for assembling an explosive device and purchased hexogen in an unidentified place and from unidentified persons." As evidence of the guilt of the defendants, the investigation cites a large list of weapons that were allegedly confiscated in the houses of the accused in the village of Ekazhevo. But lawyer Pliev expressed doubts to The New Times that all this would be taken to court.

How the accused will prove their innocence, neither the press nor the public will know. The process is held behind closed doors, almost all lawyers signed a non-disclosure agreement. The results of previous terrorism trials are not encouraging: the weak evidence base in such high-profile cases has never prevented the courts from finding the defendants guilty.

“It's amazing that all terrorists are almost always killed,” says Aleksey Malashenko, a political scientist at the Carnegie Moscow Center. - They launch a rocket, destroy the apartment along with the militants. Processes on charges of terrorism are being closed. Maybe because they do not want to take risks - there is not enough evidence. Maybe because they are afraid that if there is an open trial and the terrorists start talking about something, many will not like it. The North Caucasus is an intimate affair: clans, clans, ethnic groups. Everything is very interconnected there. It is not always convenient for the authorities to publish the true information, for what reason the terrorist act was committed.

Your own terrorist Human rights activists, who have been monitoring criminal cases related to terrorist attacks for many years, point out that such cases are often fabricated. And confessions extracted under torture are enough to bring the case to court.

Human rights activists Elena Burtina (left) and Svetlana Gannushkina help Zelimkhan Chitigov

the punishment of the people who tortured him. Islam Umarpa-shaev (lower photo on the left) and Igor Kalyapin

“Everyone who is detained in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan on the slightest suspicion of being in connection with the armed underground is tortured,” says Tatyana Lokshina, deputy director of Human Rights Watch. “We are dealing with a system, not with individual incidents. This system leads to the exasperation of society, drives young people into the forest. A person who once got to the security forces understands that he is now listed in the database, and if something explodes near his house, he will be accused of this crime. I remember well the story of a Chechen who was arrested on suspicion of involvement in Shamil Basayev's attack on Nazran. He called Memorial and told literally the following: “I am guilty of this crime, but they tortured me so much that I named several dozen people who had nothing to do with anything at all. I don’t know what to do about it, because I keep thinking that they are also being tortured.”

Recently, human rights activists have managed to collect several reliable evidence that confirms that the security forces in the North Caucasus are fabricating criminal cases. “Here is a good example,” says Lokshina. “The story of Islam Umarpashaev, a Chechen whose case was dealt with by a consolidated mobile group of human rights activists.” In December 2009, Umarpashaev was taken away from his home by officers from the Oktyabrsky police department in Grozny. Then he was handed over to the OMON of the Chechen Republic, and then he disappeared for four months. After his release, Umarpashaev told what happened to him. He was kept in the basement of one of the premises of the riot police. First they beat me, then they stopped, they forced me to grow a mustache and a beard. Umarpashaev said that he heard the guards say to each other: “Here we will have our own suicide bomber.” He was saved by the fact that his relatives turned to human rights activists, and those to the European Court of Human Rights, and the Russian government had to explain itself to Strasbourg.

“Apparently, at some point, the riot police and the Chechen investigating authorities decided that it was easier for them to release this person, because of whom such a fuss arose, than to fiddle with possible consequences,” explains Lokshina. Now the head of the Committee against Torture, Igor Kalyapin, is dealing with the case of Islam Umarpashaev

* * The human rights organization is located in Nizhny Novgorod. In June 2011, she received the PACE Human Rights Award. . Islam, along with his family, was taken to a safe place, and he hopes to bring his tormentors to justice.

Mistrust Another example is the story of the Ingush Zelimkhan Chitigov, which is told by Svetlana Gannushkina, chairman of Civic Assistance. “Chitigov's story shows the fabrication of terrorist crimes,” says the human rights activist. - He was detained in April 2010 in Karabulak, endured terrible torment and did not take on any of the crimes in which he was forced to confess. Explosive device, as follows from the protocol, was found

in the swaddling clothes of his two-month-old daughter."

On April 5, 2010, an explosion occurred at the parking lot of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Ingush city of Karabulak, 9 people were injured. On April 27, 30-40 armed men broke into Chitigov's house, put a bag over his head, tied his hands with scotch tape and took him to the Center for Combating Extremism, which is located next to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia. They tortured him for four days, took him to a sauna, where drunken policemen drank beer and mocked him, brought him to the Russian military, and they offered to confess to stealing a car, keeping a gun, or at least stealing chickens. He refused everything. This story ended with the fact that on April 30, Chitigov was brought to court in order to choose a measure of restraint. There he became ill, he lost consciousness. Relatives called an ambulance. The court ordered his arrest, but Chitigov was hospitalized at the Republican Hospital in Nazran. A month later, he became even worse, he could no longer walk, hear, or understand. Human rights activists have made him hospitalized in the Moscow Botkin Hospital. “The doctors put him on his feet, speech and intellectual abilities were fully restored,” says Gannushkina.

Chitigov told human rights activists in detail about the torture, and they were able to get through to the President of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. At first, he did not believe that his subordinates went to the crime, but the check confirmed Chitigov's words. A criminal case was opened against the head of the Karabulak GOVD, Nazir Guliyev, and his deputy, Ilez Nalgiev, and on September 12, a trial will begin in Karabulak on charges of “exceeding official authority,” in fact, of beating Chitigov and fabricating a criminal case. “Such a practice of “disclosing” crimes has long become the norm. The same was expected from Chitigov, but the system failed, stumbling upon his absolute inability to lie, ”says Gannushkina. In August, the case against Chitigov was closed. At the same time, human rights activists took him abroad.

Such stories about the fabrication of criminal cases and the torture of detainees give rise to legitimate distrust of law enforcement agencies. It turns out that society cannot be sure: those who are caught by the special services and tried behind closed doors are imaginary or genuine terrorists?