"Mediazona": The "Network" case in St. Petersburg

After a three-month break, the trial of Viktor Filinkov and Yuliy Boyarshinov continued in St. Petersburg, whom the prosecution calls members of the "Network" terrorist community. At the meeting, where neither journalists nor listeners were allowed under the pretext of quarantine, the defense side presents its arguments - the prosecution finished speaking in February. Mediazona recalls how the prosecutor's office proved to the court that both defendants were terrorists.

Filinkov, 25, and Yuliy Boyarshinov, 28, have been in pre-trial detention for more than two years, both were detained in St. Petersburg in January 2018. Filinkov told how the FSB officers tortured him with a stun gun, and Boyarshinov about beatings in the press hut in the Gorelovo pre-trial detention center. Both are accused of participating in a terrorist community (Part 2 of Article 205.4 of the Criminal Code) — according to investigators, they were members of the anarchist organization Set, which was created in May 2015 in Penza by anti-fascist Dmitry Pchelintsev. The purpose of the "Network", insist the FSB, was the "armed overthrow of power."

The organization, according to the FSB, was divided into regional cells, and the roles between the participants were strictly distributed. Filinkov and Boyarshinov entered the "Network" in 2016 - in the St. Petersburg cells "Marsovo Pole" and "Jordan" - the first became a signalman, the second a sapper. Both, according to investigators, took part in training, where they learned to handle weapons and prepare improvised explosive devices, and in 2017 attended the Network congress, where they discussed the readiness of the organization’s members for “terrorist actions.”

The 2nd Western District Military Court began considering their case in April 2019. The meetings were regularly postponed and rescheduled, so during this time the court in Penza managed to consider the case of local activists, who were also accused as members of the Network, and pass a harsh sentence on them - seven young people received from 6 to 18 years in prison . At the end of February in St. Petersburg, the prosecutor announced that the prosecution had finished presenting its evidence. There were no meetings for three months due to the coronavirus epidemic, and from May 25, the defense side will present its arguments. In the meantime, Mediazona briefly recounts what evidence the prosecution brought to show the court that Filinkov and Boyarshinov are terrorists.

Testimony of Yuliy Boyarshinov, who agreed with the version of the prosecution and asked for a special order of the trial . During the arrest, Boyarshinov was found to have 409 grams of black powder, because of this he is also accused of illegal possession of explosives (Part 1 of Article 222.1 of the Criminal Code) - Boyarshinov himself explains that he worked as an industrial climber and, having found gunpowder on one of the roofs, decided to take him home. During the investigation, the activist repeatedly complained about the pressure and beatings in the pre-trial detention center. He did not testify for a long time, but then he nevertheless decided to plead guilty, and in court he asked for a special order, but he was refused .

In court, Boyarshinov said that he and his friends feared that something similar to the Maidan in Kiev, in which the far right took an active part, could happen in Russia - and that it was better to acquire self-defense skills in advance. “I believed that a coup was possible in Russia,” he explained. - I learned from the Internet that there are groups in Russia that are ready to seize power, similar to Ukraine. I decided that I needed to get skills too.” These skills, according to Boyarshinov, would help him defend himself against the far right.

Friends took courses at the Partizan club , which has been openly operating since 2012, where they learned how to handle weapons and explosive devices, radio communications, first aid and survival in the forest. Later, he continued training on his own with his fellow activists from St. Petersburg.

According to Boyarshinov, in the summer of 2016, they were visited by Penza activists who were also interested in self-defense and conducted training. “The guys from Penza showed a document that they called “The Code”, they have a certain project “Network”, [created to] improve the interaction of various groups and to engage in self-defense,” the defendant said.

Confessions of the defendants in the Penza part of the “Network” case, which they refused and said that they signed the confessions under torture. During the investigation, testimony against Filinkov and Boyarshinov was given by Arman Sagynbaev, Dmitry Pchelintsev and Ilya Shakursky. The interrogation protocol for Shakursky, for example, says that Filinkov participated in joint training with him and taught his comrades-in-arms encryption methods and the use of secure means of communication. According to him, Pchelintsev came to St. Petersburg, where he met with local members of the "Network" and together they discussed plans to "overthrow the government."

During interrogation in court, Shakursky said that these testimonies were written by the FSB investigator Valery Tokarev, and he signed them after the torture - Shakursky described in detail how he was tortured with electric current in the Penza pre-trial detention center. also spoke about the torture Pchelintsev and Sagynbaev , and they also refused to confess. In court, all three insisted that they knew nothing about the “Network community”.

Testimony of Yegor Zorin, the charge against whom was dropped after writing a confession. The formal basis for initiating a criminal case in Penza was the surrender of student Yegor Zorin, who was detained by the FSB in October 2018. He was released from criminal liability in the Network case and received a suspended sentence in the case of possession of drugs found on him during a search. In court in St. Petersburg, Zorin said that he saw Filinkov and Boyarshinov at the "congress" of representatives of the "Network" in February 2017.

“[Filinkov] took a more active position at the congress, spoke out what he said, I don’t remember, approximately, that it was necessary to continue preparing the detachment,” argued Zorin . Boyarshinov, he said, was more silent.

What were the acts of violence supposed to be? — Prosecutor Ekaterina Kachurina asked.

- Popular unrest will begin, and it will be necessary to support these unrest, it will be necessary to use weapons and so on.

Testimony of Igor Shishkin, who concluded an agreement with the investigation. Detained the day after Viktor Filinkov, anti-fascist Igor Shishkin pleaded guilty after an interrogation by the FSB that lasted more than a day. Later, he entered into a pre-trial agreement with the investigation, testified against himself and other defendants and received 3.5 years in prison. In court, Shishkin said that Filinkov was in the Field of Mars cell, Boyarshinov was a member of the Jordan. Shishkin learned about the "Network" in 2016 at a meeting with Penza activists who proposed "joining efforts in order to gain skills."

Penza residents, he said, showed the text of the "Code" - a set of theses about the structure of the proposed organization, its goals and distribution of roles. Shishkin said that during the training, the activists discussed the future of the country and the experience of Ukraine, where “some strange circles, including Nazi, paramilitary ones, gained power,” and learned first aid skills and industrial mountaineering.

Neither Zorin nor Shishkin ever spoke publicly about torture. However, after Shishkin's arrest, members of the Public Monitoring Commission learned that the doctors of the pre-trial detention center diagnosed him with a fracture of the lower wall of the orbit, numerous bruises and abrasions. Observers recorded traces on Shishkin's body that looked like burns from electrical wires. The anti-fascist assured that he received hematomas in training, but he does not remember where he got burns from.

“The Code of the Network” and the minutes of its congress, which are considered by the experts of the Ministry of Justice to be unfinished drafts. Among the material evidence there are many texts found on the computers of some of the accused - for example, poems by Ilya Shakursky. Two documents found on Arman Sagynbayev's external hard drive and Shakursky's computer were given special attention by the prosecution - these are the files "Regulations" (the FSB considers it to be the "Code of the Network") and "Congress-2017".

During the Penza trial, FSB investigator Valery Tokarev claimed that these documents were recovered from the deleted ones. During the process, it turned out that the files from Shakursky’s computer were edited on October 30, 2017, when he was already in the pre-trial detention center, and the author of the changes was the user shepelev - and the Network case in Penza was investigated by FSB operative Vyacheslav Shepelev. He, according to Shakursky, was one of those who tortured him with electric current. “He immediately said: ‘Don’t expect us to play fair with you,’” recalled in court. Shakursky

The longest break in the trial of Filinkov and Boyarshinov was connected with the examination of all these files appointed by the court - it took about nine months. Ministry of Justice experts found in several texts, including four poems by Shakursky, propaganda of violent and destructive actions against a group of people “they”, “bandits”, “authorities” and “opponents”.

Neither the "Regulations" nor the "Congress 2017" found anything like this - experts considered these texts to be unfinished and fragmentary drafts that contain fragments of personal correspondence and even a shopping list ("Salad, ciabatta, flour, only normal, of the highest grade. Tomatoes like there is, there is packaging. Well, and rolls, of course. 24 pieces"). “The heterogeneous structure of the text, repetitive parts of the text, fragments that do not have a meaningful connection with the main text, episodes, the semantic content of which is not possible to establish, indicate that this text is unfinished, possibly a draft version,” the specialists of the Ministry of Justice stated.

Photos of Filinkov with his wife and weapons issued to her . The prosecution paid much attention to the Vepr-12 Molot smooth-bore gun and the AKM-based gun, permission to keep which was obtained by Filinkov's wife Alexander Aksenova. The fact that the young people had a safe with weapons at home was confirmed in court by the defendant's colleagues Yegor Kirillov , Stepan Prokofiev and Diana Fomina .

“In conversations with colleagues, someone joked that Vitya’s wife has a hunting rifle, if he lingers at work, she will shoot him,” Kirillov recalled.

Photographs of the couple were also examined in court, on one of which, for example, Filinkov is lying in bed, and a weapon is pointed at him, and on the other his tattoos. “There is a photograph of his wife - what does this even prove? Why did the investigator decide that this proves something? perplexed Filinkov was .

Information compiled by FSB operatives. In one of the two certificates presented to the court, FSB operative Konstantin Bondarev - whom Filinkov called one of the participants in the torture - writes that he received information about the Network cells operating in St. Petersburg and the congress held in the city, which was attended by cells from St. Belarus. The purpose of the "Network", according to the FSB operative, was the armed overthrow of the government. “The participants of the congress considered the examples of Syria, Bolotnaya Square, Maidan and other revolutions that took place in various countries as scenarios of possible events,” the document says.

Another report from the FSB states that Dmitry Pchelintsev from Penza distributed the roles in the “terrorist community”, and the “Network” members prepared terrorist attacks before the World Cup and the presidential elections in 2018.

FSB officers claim that Filinkov went to Kiev for the New Year holidays to look for “comrades-in-arms to carry out illegal actions or to communicate with radicals or members of the special services of Ukraine” - Filinkov’s colleagues in court said that he visited his wife there. Alexandra Aksenova herself, according to the documents, “acted as the chairman of the Network congress” and rented an apartment for him, and from Sagynbaev’s testimony it follows that he acquired the “components for making IEDs” found in his house together with Aksenova and Igor Shishkin - however, Sagynbaev was never charged with trafficking in explosives.

Conversation between Filinkov and Boyarshinov in the escort room of the court . During the extension of the arrest on June 19, 2018, both ended up in the same convoy premises, where wiretapping was installed. The prosecutor tried to read this record in court, but because of the objections of the defense, this was not possible.

At the request of lawyer Vitaly Cherkasov, in order to check whether the recording was edited and whether the voices of the defendants were accurate on it, the court ordered a phonoscopic examination. When the FSB expert was recording voice samples, Viktor Filinkov, who pleads not guilty, for the first time had the opportunity to tell in court what happened to him after his arrest:

“When I was tortured, it was unexpected. It wasn't like the movies show it at all. I have never experienced anything like this in my life. I was shocked - a socket, a telephone wire ... But when they beat me with a shocker for a while, it was a completely different feeling. Against their background, they beat me, and the beating was not felt at all. No way. In addition to blows to the head, when they hit me on the head, my eyes turned a little white. My eyes were closed for the most part because my hat was pulled over my face. But his eyes turned white from blows to the head.

After a few minutes of the story about torture, the FSB officer could not stand it:

“Perhaps you can tell me something more pleasant?”

- It was not pleasant.

On May 25, the trio of judges of the 2nd Western District Military Court - Roman Muranov, Yuri Chepelev and Sergey Krivosheev - continued to consider the Network case in St. Petersburg after a three-month break. Neither journalists nor listeners were allowed into the court under the pretext of quarantine due to the coronavirus epidemic. The court also refused to organize a broadcast on the Internet, but allowed the defense to broadcast live from the meetings on Facebook .