The prosecutor's office will check the police who allegedly uncovered the extremist organization

Yesterday, the prosecutor's office began an investigation into operatives involved in the investigation into the organization of the extremist community Antifa-RASH, whose members are accused of several attacks. According to lawyers, in order to prove the existence of an underground organization, the police printed party IDs with its symbols, which they planted on the defendants during searches.

Five residents of Nizhny Novgorod became defendants in the Antifa-RASH case: Artur Gainutdinov, Artem Bystrov, Pavel Krivonosov, Dmitry Kolesov and Oleg Gimbaruk. They are charged under Art. 115 (“Intentional infliction of minor harm to health”), Art. 116 (“Beatings”), art. 213 (“Hooliganism”), as well as Part 1 of Art. 282 (“Organization of an extremist community”) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

According to the investigation, in January 2007, Artur Gainutdinov decided to create in the city “a cohesive, stable organized group of people to prepare extremist crimes,” which was subsequently joined by four more defendants. According to the case materials, members of the Antifa-RASH group were united by anti-fascist views and hatred of the social groups “skinheads” and “nationalists.” In 2010, members of the group carried out a series of attacks on residents of Nizhny Novgorod, whom they considered right-wing radicals.

The defendants themselves deny both their participation in the anti-fascist group and in the fights. Only two people are willing to bear responsibility under the article “Beatings”. During the investigation, they admitted that they had participated in two fights, which resulted in a broken nose for one of the victims. “In fact, operatives are trying to pass off several unrelated domestic fights as the activities of an organized extremist cell that never existed,” says Dmitry Dinze, a lawyer for one of the defendants. According to one of the defendants, Pavel Krivonosov, the Antifa-RASH organization is “a figment of the imagination of Center E employees,” and he met half of the defendants only during the investigation.

The main evidence of the existence of “Antifa RASH” was party cards with the symbols of the organization and their names found during searches of the defendants. However, the defendants and their lawyers claim that they were fabricated by employees of the E center. “They need statistics, so they came up with such an organization. These certificates are even misspelled: “Red anarchy of skinheads” instead of “Red anarcho-skinheads,” this is easy to check on the Internet,” says Mr. Dinze.

The defense version was confirmed by the main prosecution witness, Alexander Cherny, who spoke in court. He knew some of the defendants and initially told investigators in detail about the Antifa-RASH hierarchy, its tasks and the distribution of roles among the defendants in the case. However, in court he unexpectedly retracted his words. According to Mr. Cherny, he gave his testimony under pressure and threats from Center E operatives, and he was forcibly brought to one of the interrogations and was required to “invent” testimony about an extremist group.

Investigator Elena Blinova, who recorded Mr. Cherny’s testimony, stated that he refused it “out of fear of the defendants.” “It is much easier to denigrate an investigator than to justify yourself to your friends for testifying against them,” she said.

Yesterday the prosecutor's office began checking Mr. Cherny's statement. “They have 20 days to check by law. We will seek to initiate criminal proceedings against the police,” said Mr. Dinze. If the audit ends not in favor of the Interior Ministry employees, the lawyer says, then the main charge of organizing an extremist community against the defendants may be dropped.

Anton Prusakov, Nizhny Novgorod

Anti-fascists were given a one-way party ticket