Examination at the time

The agricultural chemist was put to Zelenin, then released, then a new charge was charged

Examination at the time. On September 25, the Zyuzinsky District Court of Moscow freed Olga Zelenin, who was suspected of combination in drug smuggling, from the guard of the candidate of agricultural sciences. The next day, she was charged with a new charge under Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Excess of official powers”). The New Times found out how an independent expert ended up in the bench of the defendants and what power the solidarity of the scientific community has “do not imagine what 40 days in the Moscow prison,” the excited Olga Zelenina says in a break before announcing the decision of the Zyuzinsky court on the extent of suppression. A fragile woman of small stature seems to hold back her tears, but continues to loudly tell the assembled story, which brought her to the chamber of the investigative insulator.

Olga Zelenina two days after the release from prison a letter from the misfortune in 2011, entrepreneur Sergey Shilov turned to the Penza Research Institute of Agriculture for an independent expert assessment. Back in 2010, he brought 42 tons of food poppy from Spain to Russia, in which, according to FSKN investigators, there were 504 grams of narcotic substances. In October 2010, a criminal case was instituted on Shilov, and the goods were arrested. At Shilov’s request, it was instructed to answer the head of the chemical laboratory of the Penza Research Institute of the Research Institute Olga Zelenina. She conducted an examination and came to the conclusion that it was not possible to separate these small impurities. Thus, Zelenina denied the decision of the FSKN examination. A letter that, according to Olga Zelenina, does not have an official status, compiled in the form of answers to 16 questions, was sent to the entrepreneur.

On August 15, 2012, at 6 a.m., FSKN investigators came home to the expert (17 law enforcement officers participated in its detention, some in masks and with machine guns), took it into custody and, without allowing them to collect things, immediately sent it to Moscow. There she was kept in a pre -trial detention center, in the same cell with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, until September 25. Olga Zelenina became a suspect in Shilov’s case: she was charged with a “obviously false examination”, which actually turned her into an accomplice of a “criminal community” in the case of drug smuggling.

“This letter was really prepared by me, I never denied this. A specialist always responds to all requests to the institute. A letter for MKM LLC 1 was sent to me by the director (research institute) officially. I prepared the answers, and he read them. He said: “There is no crime, I sign, send it,” Olga Zelenina recalls last year's events. However, according to her, subsequently the director of the Research Institute told the investigators that he really signed the letter, but did not read, because he trusted the conclusions of his employee. The lawyer Natalya Andreeva tried to achieve the confrontation of Olga Zelenina and the director, but she was never organized. Zelenina herself, it seems, does not hold on the head of evil. “God is the judge, I forgave him,” she says calmly, sitting in an iron cage in the building of the Zyuzinsky court.

Kafka-Control “We will not have an independent examination institution if scientists and experts are afraid to make a conclusion that may not arrange the investigating authorities. And the investigating authorities can in any situation take and put a specialist in prison, accused of complicity and complicity, ”said Irina Levontina, candidate of philological sciences and specialist in forensic linguistic examination. It was she who organized the campaign to support Olga Zelenina. She managed to mobilize not only the media, but also wide scientific circles. Irina Levontina identifies several reasons at once, why Olga Zelenina was behind bars. In her opinion, the matter is not only in her letter, which “prevented” departmental investigators, but also in the active work of the Penza expert in the scientific group to make changes to GOSTs. “After all, if the legislation is written poorly, dull, ambiguously, it is always in hand, someone benefits. Apparently, she also angered someone with this, ”said Irina Levontina. Its point of view is generally shared not only by other scientists who, a united front, defended Zelenina, but also close relatives of the accused. “The orders are one hundred percent,” said Vladimir Kirichenko, the cousin of Olga Zelenina, who supports Zelenins throughout the process.

Anastasia Boyarkina, the head of the press service of the FSKN in Moscow, refused to comment on Zelenina's case, although she noted that journalists often call her on this issue. Nikolai Kartashov, who heads the press service of the Federal FSKN, said that "Mac came to Russia smuggled, and naturally, Perenina is aiding." As for Olga Zelenina’s work in the GOST improvement group as a possible reason for her detention, according to Kartashov, there is no point in entering into a long discussion, and “protection always believes that only she is right”.

Olga Zelenina herself prefers not to answer the question of why she was detained, as he is still amazed at the absurdity of the charges against her. During a second hearing, the judge asks Zelenina whether it is possible to read out a list of her diseases: among them, coronary heart disease. Holding onto the bars of the iron cage, she answers in a weak voice: "Do as you think it is necessary." “This is a Kafkian justice machine,” says a young scientist, mathematician Grigory Kolyutsky, one of the organizers of the scientific and educational column on the “Million Marsh” on September 15. It was he who, together with activists from Moscow State University, created a page on Zelenina on Facebook. Largely thanks to this, it was possible to mobilize the public.

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We will not have an institution of independent examination if scientists and specialists are afraid to make a conclusion that may not arrange the investigating authorities

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The whole scientific world “The matter is in a sense is significant. A person is judged strictly for the performance of his professional duties, and this is a person in the broad sense of one workshop with us, ”emphasized Mikhail Gelfand, a doctor of biological sciences, a world -famous scientist. It was he who contacted Nature magazine, the main world publication writing about science, and made a possible publication about Zelenina’s case, thanks to which it received international resonance.

“I think that numerous guarantees played a role here: both the Russian Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin and many respected people from the society of scientists and many members of the Public Chamber, and, of course, the scientific community who showed such solidarity,” said the lawyer Natalya Andreeva, after the decision was issued on the release of Olga Zheninina from under Guards. “I am not surprised that intelligent people acted in this way,” said the lawyer who works on this matter for free.

Indeed, guarantees and letters from representatives of science and the Public Chamber look impressive. Andrei Tsaturyan, the doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, the leading employee of Moscow State University, told how he suggested his colleagues from the Society of Scientists (OHP) to draw up a collective letter in support of Olga Zelenina. He wrote a text that 359 people signed in three days, including several members of the Russian Academy of Sciences and many doctors and candidates of sciences. This text, by the way, formed the basis of another letter, from the Public Chamber. “I would never have thought that I would become a speaker of Tina Kandelaki,” jokes Andrei Tsaturyan, one of the five scientists who personally entrusted Olga Zelenin. In court, the guarantees of Irina Levontina, Mikhail Gelfand, deputy director for scientific work of the Institute of Theoretical Physics named after Landau RAS Mikhail Feigelman, leading researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the editor -in -chief of the newspaper Trinity Option, Boris Stern. Geophysicist Alexei Ivanov from Irkutsk also signed a guarantee and sent the original by mail.

The norm and pathology “This story, even against the backdrop of everything that was happening, seemed some particularly absurd, and the legs themselves brought here,” says the poet and publicist Lev Rubinstein, who came to the Zyuzinsky court with his friends from the scientific community. Many brought white flowers to court - a symbol of innocence of Olga Zelenina. Her husband Igor admitted that colleagues in the Penza Research Institute morally helped him in these difficult months, but none of them could come: too much spending for a scientist who has not paid a salary for months. “The state spends more money on my maintenance than the salary that he pays to me. I am carried by three armed officers of the FSKN in a special machine. You can imagine what kind of money it is! I was brought from Penza here on an airplane, ”Olga Zelenina is amazed at the logic of law enforcement agencies.

When the judge reads the decision to release from custody, everyone in the hall seems to exhale with relief. At the end of speech, they begin to applaud. “I am happy that you do not have to return to jail,” admits Zelenin, who repeatedly complained about the conditions of detention. “We learned to rejoice at any manifestations of the norm against the background of pathology ... When they let go home, it seems to us a terrible victory,” Lev Rubinstein noticed even before the verdict.

A new turn is indeed a rare decision for Russian judicial practice to cancel the initial court order was perceived by relatives and friends as a big victory. But on September 28, Olga Zelenina was charged with the new edition: they added a new article - “Excess of official powers”. Investigators of drug control suspect Zelenin of giving expert assessments without authority. “The accusation of abuse of authority is ridiculous,” said the New Times, Irina Levontina, “she did not sign this document. How could she exceed her authority? Preparation of paper is not an official action. ”

The scientific community, which defended Olga Zelenina, is not going to give up. “Gradually, we will figure out all these accusations,” added Irina Levontina. As Lev Rubinstein noted: "We have become a bad tradition of walking on ships."

By the way, on September 28, entrepreneur Sergey Shilov was released from custody, to whom Zelenina once gave an expert opinion. As the lawyer Natalya Andreeva said The New Times, the liberation of Zelenina entailed the abolition of Shilov’s arrest.

Anna Karetnikova,
Member of the socio-observation commission (PMC) at the places of imprisonment of the city of Moscow: “Olga Nikolaevna Zelenina, an employee of the Penza Research Institute of Agriculture, one of the best and rare in Russia specialists in the production of non-non-non-discomed crops, in particular, poppy. She was engaged in poppy, dreaming of organizing landing in Russia of a non -signatistic poppy oil. FSKN is also engaged in poppy seeds, periodically organizing those who sell and buys this poppy in various cities in various cities. The scheme is simple: the MAC imported to Russia almost freely passes the border, already under the vigilant control of the FSKN, all those who acquire the same control and spreads for confectionery needs, sometimes in the form of buns and bagels. According to Olga Nikolaevna, from the poppy business, the FSKN receives either money for rollbacks or stars for the successfully exposed affairs of the "drug dealers": after all, according to GOST, the MAC acting in Russia to be recognized as Ignarus, it is almost impossible.

Zelenina tried to argue with this practice. In addition to growing its own, domestic poppy, its recipes were simple: to bring GOST in line with European standards that allow the content of insignificant amounts of narcotic impurities in the poppy, to ban the import of poppy to Russia to this point. However, Olga Nikolaevna herself, until the moment of detention, did not know that she was fighting with the FSKN. She believed that she was collaborating. A certificate of this is a letter of thanks to the Penza FSKN on the wall of her office in the NIIISH ... "