In Penza, three defendants in the Network case were finally charged

In Penza, three defendants in the Network case were finally charged. The head of the human rights movement “For Human Rights” Lev Ponomarev told OVD-Info about this.

Dmitry Pchelintsev and Ilya Shakursky were accused of creating a terrorist community (Part 1 of Article 205.4 of the Criminal Code). Arman Sagynbaev was charged with participation in a terrorist community (Part 2 of Article 205.4 of the Criminal Code). It is unknown whether the other defendants in the case have been charged.

According to the movement “For Human Rights”, the investigator offered Pchelintsev the following conditions: if he admits guilt, he will be charged with participation in a terrorist community, under this part of the article he would face a punishment of five to ten years in prison. But if he refuses to admit guilt, he will be accused of organizing a terrorist community. In this case, he faces a term of 15 to 20 years in prison. Pchelintsev refused to admit his guilt.

The human rights organization notes that after Sagynbaev refused to confess, he was threatened by FSB officers for five hours. They told the accused that they would send him “north, to Sentsov,” while saying that he “still has the opportunity to change his testimony.”

• According to investigators, “Network” is a terrorist organization, which allegedly has cells in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Penza and Belarus. Law enforcement officers believe that community members were preparing to start an armed rebellion in Russia.
• In Penza in the fall of 2017, anti-fascists Ilya Shakursky, Dmitry Pchelintsev, Andrei Chernov, Arman Sagynbaev and Vasily Kuksov were arrested on charges of participation in the “Network” (Part 2 of Article 205.4 of the Criminal Code). Another person involved in the case, Yegor Zorin, was placed under house arrest.
• The defendants in the Network case talked about psychological pressure, electric shock torture and weapons that FSB officers planted on them. Some of them refused to confess and said that they gave them under torture.
• In January, anti-fascist Viktor Filinkov was detained in St. Petersburg. He is also accused of participating in the Network. Filinkov admitted guilt, but later stated that he did it under torture. Members of the Public Monitoring Commission of St. Petersburg recorded numerous traces of burns from a stun gun on the anti-fascist’s body. Anti-fascist Igor Shishkin is involved in the same case; he did not report torture, but the Public Monitoring Committee also recorded injuries on his body. Investigative actions in St. Petersburg were authorized by one of the district courts of Penza.
• On April 11, charges were brought against another St. Petersburg resident, Yuli Boyarshinov. FSB officers demanded that Boyarshinov “speak,” threatening to “make things worse.” As a result, the young man was transferred to another pre-trial detention center with, according to the lawyer, tortured conditions.
• On July 5, two more defendants in the case were arrested in Penza - Mikhail Kulkov and Maxim Ivankin. They were accused of preparing for the production or sale of drugs on a large scale (clause “d” of Part 4 of Article 228.1 of the Criminal Code with the use of Part 3 of Article 30 of the Criminal Code). In June, the case of Ivankin and Kulkov was added to the case of the Network organization. Before this, the young people were detained in March 2017 along with anti-fascist Alexey Poltavets and accused of drug possession. According to Poltavets, after their arrest they were tortured and beaten, demanding to testify against their friends from the anti-fascist environment.
• On August 22, it became known that the defendants in the case, Viktor Filinkov and Yulia Boyarshinov, were escorted to the Penza pre-trial detention center. At the end of July, the two of them and Igor Shishkin, another accused, were taken from the pre-trial detention center in the Leningrad region and St. Petersburg to Yaroslavl.
• On September 6, Sagynbaev said that he was also tortured by FSB officers. He refused to confess, saying that he gave them under torture.