The court recognized as legal the refusal to initiate a case of torture of the accused in the “Penza case” Shakursky

The Penza Garrison Military Court rejected the complaint of the defense of the arrested anti-fascist Ilya Shakursky about the refusal to initiate a case on a complaint of torture, lawyer Eldar Luzin told Mediazona.

Shakursky's defense initially filed a complaint about torture in February 2018. In April, the military investigative department of the Investigative Committee refused to open a criminal case. Luzin noted that judge Evgeny Kozlov was considering complaints related to the torture of those accused in the “Penza case” for the third time.

Luzin added that the judge “as always” closed the trial. “There is no reason [for the closure]. The judge decided it should be closed. That’s it,” the lawyer said. According to him, if journalists had been present at the meeting, “the whole country would have laughed at the investigator.”

The criminal case against the “terrorist community “Network”” was opened by the FSB in October 2017. Then, within a month, Yegor Zorin, Ilya Shakursky, Vasily Kuksov, Dmitry Pchelintsev, Andrei Chernov and Arman Sagynbaev were detained in Penza (the latter was found by security forces in St. Petersburg and transported to Penza). Two Penza residents - Maxim Ivankin and Mikhail Kulkov - fled and were put on the wanted list; On July 6 it became known that they were detained in Moscow, taken to Penza and arrested. In January, Viktor Filinkov and Igor Shishkin were detained in St. Petersburg in connection with the same case. On April 11, charges were brought against another St. Petersburg resident, Yuli Boyarshinov.

Most of the defendants in the case are anti-fascists and anarchists; Many detainees are also united by their passion for airsoft. The FSB claims that all those arrested were members of the underground organization “Network” and intended, during the presidential elections and the World Cup, to use explosions to “sway the masses to further destabilize the political situation in the country” and raise an armed rebellion. Network cells allegedly operated in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Penza and Belarus.

Relatives of the Penza defendants in the case said that during their arrest they were planted with weapons and then tortured. spoke in detail about torture Viktor Filinkov , Dmitry Pchelintsev and Ilya Shakursky . In September, Arman Sagynbaev said that he confessed under torture. , who was released as a witness, also reported about the interrogation with the use of a stun gun Ilya Kapustin - fearing for his safety, he, like Filinkov’s wife Alexandra , went to Finland, where he asked for political asylum.

Pchelintsev and Shakursky claimed that FSB officers tortured them with electric shocks in the basement of the Penza pre-trial detention center. Shishkin did not report torture, but doctors diagnosed him with a fracture of the lower wall of the orbit, numerous hematomas and abrasions, and members of the Public Monitoring Committee who visited Shishkin in the pre-trial detention center recorded numerous marks on his body similar to burns from electrical wires. In addition, the accused Yuliy Boyarshinov spent several months in the “press huts” of pre-trial detention center No. 6 in the Leningrad region. There he was beaten several times.

The Investigative Committee has already refused to initiate criminal cases of torture of Filinkov and Kapustin - the investigator decided that Filinkov was legally beaten by FSB officers with a stun gun , and the marks on Kapustin’s body were not from the stun gun, but from bedbug bites .

Part 2 of Article 205.4 of the Criminal Code (participation in a terrorist community), under which the “Penza case” was initiated and is being investigated, provides for five to 10 years in prison. One of the defendants in the case, anti-fascist Igor Shishkin, has already received 3.5 years in prison. He fully admitted his guilt, signed an agreement to cooperate with the investigation and testified against the other defendants.