Comments by Olga Tseytlina and Stefania Kulaeva on the case of Alexander Zenin

Lawyer Olga Tseytlina and head of the Memorial ADC Stefania Kulaeva gave comments to the SOVA center in connection with the report that the case of Alexander Zenin, who had been on the federal wanted list for 12 years on suspicion of the murder of Timur Kacharava, was submitted to the court.   Zeitlin was represented in court by his mother.
Olga Zeitlina:
Neither me nor Irina Anatolyevna (the mother of the murdered Timur) was informed by the investigating authorities for the detention and prosecution of Zenin, we learned about his detention and trial from the media. Zenin, except for Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, was not imputed to anything in the final charge, that is, law enforcement agencies were charged with murder in the excess of the performer, such was the vicious practice of prosecution under such articles. The authorities did not need qualifications under the article murder motivated by any kind of hatred. Also in Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Murder”) at that time there was no aggravating qualifying sign - “murder motivated by hatred and enmity against any social group” (as well as motivated by ideological or political enmity - approx. “Owls ”), despite the fact that the jury reached a unanimous verdict that Timur was killed precisely for his anti-fascist beliefs.

According to the victims, the elder Zenin was the main organizer of the murder, and it was not an excess of the perpetrator, as presented by the investigation and approved by the court, but a pre-planned attack and premeditated murder motivated by hatred and enmity, an action on the forbidden instructions on the "White Terror", which freely distributed in the networks: in accordance with it, they swoop in and beat a flock, and a minor or a person registered with the PND inflicts a fatal blow. It is obvious to the victims that Timur was deprived of his life by the common coordinated actions of all participants in the attack, namely, Zenin kicked him in the head, creating all the conditions for Shabalin to inflict multiple knife blows on the lying man. However, the murder in a group of persons was not imputed to anyone. Thus, Zenin evaded criminal responsibility for the premeditated murder by a group of persons motivated by hatred, for which, with the correct qualification of the deed, the accomplices were threatened with life imprisonment.

Stefania Kulaeva:
Timur has been dead for almost 13 years, those convicted for the attack on him and the murder have already served their terms, many of them have long been free. Timur was 20 years old, and now he would be 33, he should have had an interesting adult life ... But Zenin, a participant in the attack, and perhaps indeed, the organizer, lived an interesting life in freedom for almost all these years.

Since 2005, Timur's relatives have been sure that the attack was not spontaneous, that they planned to kill him. Accused of the murder, Shabalin, apparently, did not plan it. Bitterness and pain remain: so many years have passed, then young people are no longer very young, but there is still no clear understanding of everything that led to the tragic death of Timur and many more anti-fascists after him, who became victims of obviously planned attacks in Moscow and other cities. There is an impression that they simply do not want to understand the causes of those events.