Leader of “Russian Obraz” Arrested in Serbia.

On May 9, 2013, the Mass Media reported that counterintelligence BIA arrested one of the establishers of “Russian Obraz” Ilya Goryachev (born in Moscow on May 30, 1982) in Belgrad. The reason of the arrest is unknown.

The coordinator of the legal organization “Conservative human rights group” Evgeny Valyaev reported that Goryachev was arrested under the pretext of breaking the visa regime in Belgrad airport where he was meeting his friends. He was able to call his parents.

Readers will recall the nationalist had testified in court regarding the case of murder of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova against the co-establisher of “Russian Obraz” Nikita Tikhonov. Later, Goryachev left Russia and made an announcement that he had slandered the “comrade” under the investigators’ pressure and repudiated his testimony.

ICR reported that in the course of the investigation concerning Goryachev, he was accused in accordance with Part 1 of Article 282.1, Part 1 of Article 209, paragraphs “a”, “g”, “h”, “k” of Part 2 of Article 105, and Part 3 of Article 222 СС (participation in an extremist organization, organization of a gang, murder, illegal weapon trade)

On May 13, 2013, it became known that the head of the BIA press-service Jovan Stojić announced that Serbian intelligence agencies do not have any information regarding the arrest of Goryachev. He noted that the nationalist could have been arrested only by the Serbian MHA’s officials.

On June 12, it became known that a court in Belgrad ruled to extradite Goryachev to Russia. His lawyers lodged a complaint about this decision.

According to the ICR press-release, the case was brought “in regards to the organizers and participants of the extremist organization “BORN” (Goryachev and Mikhail Volkov, who was arrested in Ukraine) on charges of gangsterism, illegal trade of weapons, ammunition, and explosive devices, the murder of the Moscow City Court judge Edward Chivashov, lawyer Stanislav Markelov, leaders of so-called anti-fascist movements Fedor Filatov, Ilya Dzhaparidze, and Ivan Khutorsky, Muay Thai world champion Muslim Abdullaev, residents Salakhedin Azizov, Rasul Khalilov, Soso Hachikyan, attempted murder of Ramazan Nurichuev and member of law enforcment agency Gagik Benyaminyan”.

Ilya Goryachev established “Russian Obraz” in 2002. The mass media would report that the organization “was suspected of ties with the Kremlin in the context of so-called project of “managed nationalism”. The concept of the organization was taken after the Serbian movement “Obraz”, which was established by the monarchist Nebojša Krstić. In 2010, at the first all-Russian convention of “Russian Obraz” Goryachev resigned from his position as head of the movement.