Court on the claim of Alexey Okopny

On November 21, at 2 pm, the Simonovsky District Court of Moscow will hold a hearing on the lawsuit filed by an employee of the Moscow Center "E" Alexei Okopny against civil activists Sergei Aksenov and Pavel Shekhtman. Trench demands compensation for insulting honor and dignity. The subject of the lawsuit was publications in Grany, Gazeta.Ru and on the Radio Liberty website.

The plaintiff stated that he was discredited by the public statements of Aksenov and Shekhtman about his involvement in the death of the National Bolshevik Yuri Chervochkin. The subject of the lawsuit was last year's publications related to the detention of Aksyonov's six-year-old son, including Shekhtman's blog post on Grani.

"Thanks to people like A.S. Aksenov and P.I. Shekhtman, in many media I am mentioned only from the negative side, where I am a criminal who has committed serious criminal offenses under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. I am forced to seek protection to the court of my business reputation, since the contested open publications can seriously affect my future career in the police of the Russian Federation," the statement of claim says.

"All my impeccable ten-year service in the internal affairs bodies, service in hot spots in the North Caucasus is actually crossed out by the publications in the media by S.A. Aksenov and P.I. Shekhtman, which cause me moral and physical suffering: shame, embarrassment, heart and head pain, insomnia," the plaintiff notes.

In December 2007, the Serpukhov National Bolshevik Yuri Chervochkin, after repeated threats from law enforcement officers, was brutally beaten and died without regaining consciousness. The murder was not investigated. Okopny, who at that time headed the Department for Combating Extremism of the Moscow Department of Organized Crime Control, detained and interrogated Chervochkin and led a search at his house. Before the massacre, Chervochkin received threatening calls from a number in the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where the office of the Moscow Regional Organized Crime Control Department was located. Immediately before the murder, Chervochkin managed to report that four people were following him. He identified two persecutors as employees of the Organized Crime Control Department. According to some reports, he managed to tell his girlfriend the name Okopnoy.

Civic activists have repeatedly reported that Okopny threatened them during protests and after detentions. In November last year, Okopny was at the center of a scandal with the detention of Vanya Aksenov and his nanny Victoria Kuznetsova on Triumfalnaya Square. In the Tverskoye police department, the child was illegally interrogated by a police inspector.

Subsequently, Aksyonov filed a lawsuit with the Tverskoy Court of Moscow for compensation for non-pecuniary damage in the amount of 1 ruble, but the court dismissed the claim, refusing to summon Kuznetsova and Okopnoy. Aksyonov appealed the decision, the date of the appeal has not yet been set.

The intention of the "E" center to sue Aksyonov was announced back in November by the head of the Public Council under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Olga Kostina. She emphasized that the lawsuit would not be filed by Okonpny himself, but by the legal department of the Moscow police.