A skinny Kyrgyz cannot leave Russia

Photo: Alla Vlaskina/PublicPost

Maratbek Enshakulov came to Moscow from Kyrgyzstan to work in 2010. He worked in construction for a year and was about to return home to find himself a wife. But he failed to pass passport control at Domodedovo airport: “I arrived at the airport with a friend, everything went as usual. And then they told me that the passport was not mine, because I didn’t look like the photo in it. They took me off the flight. , they took me to a special room, where the border guard talked to me until the morning. She demanded that I confess that my passport was someone else’s, but I didn’t confess. After all, it was my passport: I was just working at a construction site: I was hanging wallpaper, laying tiles - I lost weight.”

Maratbek is 25 years old, and in his passport photo he really looks more well-fed. According to him, at Domodedovo airport, border guards kept him for three days, fed him airplane food from kits and beat him - they forced him to admit that he had come to Russia with a false passport. An uncle, a businessman, who vouched for Maratbek, and the consular service came to the rescue - he was released under the personal guarantee of a relative.

Photo: prezum.ru

Murzapayaz Karagulov, an employee of the consular service of the Kyrgyz embassy, ​​told PublicPost that he learned about the situation with Maratbek Enshakulov in November 2011 from Maratbek’s relatives, and not from border service officers, although by law they were required to do this within 24 hours. The embassy immediately made a request to the passport office, which issued Maratbek a foreign passport, and his words were confirmed: the passport turned out to be real. However, the FSB officers did not listen to the embassy, ​​the certificate from the passport office was not taken into account, the seized passport was not returned to Maratbek and he was not released into Kyrgyzstan.

It is known from the case materials that on November 21, 2011, FSB investigator Alexander Tatarinov, with the permission of the Deputy Prosecutor of the city of Domodedovo Oleg Stalnov, opened a criminal case against Maratbek under Article 322 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Illegal crossing of the state border of the Russian Federation”). Since November 2011, Maratbek has been living in Moscow, supported by his uncle, without a passport. Consulate employee Murzapayaz Karagulov assures that Maratbek was lucky: if the consular service and his uncle had not intervened in time, he would have spent all this time in a pre-trial detention center.

Photo: Alla Vlaskina/PublicPost

“Two photographic portrait examinations have already been carried out in Enshakulov’s case,” says his lawyer Philip Shishov, director of the Presumption Bar Association, whom his uncle found for him. “But for some reason, instead of taking a photograph of Maratbek himself and comparing the result with his photograph in his passport ", both times the experts used some photographs of very poor quality. Therefore, after the case was transferred to the court, the expert's conclusions were considered unreliable by the judge and were excluded from the evidence in the case. Now we are waiting for the appointment of a third examination and the court's decision."

While awaiting trial, Maratbek Enshakulov and his lawyer conducted an independent study with the author of methods and manuals on photographic portrait examination, who came to the conclusion that the conclusions of FSB experts were carried out at a low scientific level, and made a computer comparison of photographs - the 2008 passport photo and the modern one.

Photo: prezum.ru

Lawyer Shishov assures Maratbek that victory will be theirs, but at the same time tells PublicPost that because of this case, he himself is under pressure: a few days ago, the criminal investigation officer of the Domodedovo airport, Kirill Losev, called him and said that Shishov is suspected of stealing the identity certificate of Maratbek Enshakulov. The lawyer assures that the investigator Tatarinov himself exceeded his authority by proposing a kind of deal: an identification certificate in exchange for Maratbek’s consent to close the case after the statute of limitations expired. Such consent, the lawyer says, is tantamount to admitting entry into Russia using a false passport, and Maratbek refused to sign it. After Tatarinov’s boss, the head of the department of inquiry and administrative practice at Domodedovo airport Konstantin Kurgansky, intervened in the conflict, the investigator still had to issue a certificate to Maratbek. This happened in November 2012 - Maratbek walked around without any documents for a whole year.

Konstantin Kurgansky refused to give an immediate comment to PublicPost on this case.

Misunderstandings when checking the documents of foreigners are a common occurrence. Chairman of the Civic Assistance Committee Svetlana Gannushkina told PublicPost that citizens with Asian and African appearance “suffer” the most: “But it all depends on the country from which the person came: an American or a British person would be released immediately after the consular service intervened and confirmed his identity and the authenticity of the documents." An employee of the Kyrgyz embassy, ​​Murzapayaz Karagulov, is also sure that the attitude of the Russian authorities towards the citizens of Kyrgyzstan plays an important role in this story, but he does not want to dwell on this topic: “There is cooperation between our countries at the political level, but at such a low level everything is still bad.” .

An employee of the Chinese embassy, ​​who is responsible for consular protection of Chinese citizens in the Russian Federation, in a conversation with PublicPost indirectly confirmed the version of Gannushkina and Karagulov. He said that the Russian police did not recognize Chinese citizens either. He cited two cases as an example: one Chinese man became very fat, another stopped wearing glasses. However, these misunderstandings were resolved as soon as the Chinese embassy provided evidence of the authenticity of the documents of its citizens.

“Have you read Kafka’s “The Trial”? The story with Maratbek is almost the same - he did nothing wrong, but was put on trial. We will fight to the last for an acquittal and rehabilitation. And it doesn’t matter that according to statistics, acquittals in Russia are only half a percent.” , says Maratbek Enshakulov’s lawyer Philip Shishov.

How long this story will last is unknown. Maratbek is waiting for the third photographic examination and the next court hearing to be scheduled. He expects to receive compensation for the material and moral damage caused to him in Russia and finally leave for Kyrgyzstan. Shyly, he admits that after meeting Russian border guards and lawyer Shishov, he wants to enter a law school in Kyrgyzstan and become a lawyer.

Results of independent photographic examination: