"Touch, Don, what is it?" Why the 72 -year -old lawyer led almost a year under arrest in Chechnya and freed himself only when transferring the case to Stavropol

Lawyer Sergei Marakov worked in Chechnya for almost 20 years, until last December he was in a pre -trial detention center on charges of storing marijuana. The 72-year-old man spent 10 months arrest. His colleagues stood up for the lawyer, they achieved his exemption on the recognizance not to leave and transfer the case for consideration to another region. Marakov insists that the Chechen security officials were thrown by marijuana, and he connects criminal prosecution with his professional activity.

December 8, 2020. Terrible. Inspection time 22: 45-22: 55

On an elderly man in a medical mask fussyly takes off a black leather jacket, saying: "Now a second, one second." He puts it on a table on which there are already a white bag with foods, a passport, cigarettes, a telephone, crumpled napkins and two bottles with pulverizers-apparently, sanitizers.

The voice from behind the frame asks if there is something in the back pockets. “Yes, there are napkins, run into the toilet,” he replies. A short -haired man in a black mask, jacket and jeans checks his pockets and feels the trousers of an elderly man - they are empty. Then he orders to remove the dark green pulver, which is clearly puffing on his chest.

“A blouse? The wife gave it, ”the man clarifies for some reason. He takes off the pulver and remains in the pink shirt. A person in a black jacket feels her and asks: “What is this?” The inspected replies that there is a package, and twice winks into the camera. He is ordered to pull him out and put him on the table. The man asks for several times, thanks her out of place, and breaks off on this video.

On the second video, he already puts a black plastic bag on the table, his voice behind the scenes asks to open it. A man cannot cope with the knot, asks for help, then puts on glasses.

“It’s a pity for a skewer, he stands a ruble,” he says, unleashing a bag. - Oh, now, a second. Excuse me, please. I will open a second now. Yes, Christmas trees-firing, well, what is it. Sorry, please, I'm now. Here is the fool Marakov, a. It’s a pity for a pipe, he stands a ruble. That I have to tear now, why, do not. Now, one second, guys. Please shut down. Here is the fool Marakov. Forgive everything. "

When a man finally opens the package, it turns out some kind of dried grass. A voice behind the scenes asks what it is. The man says he forgot the name. "Touch, Don, what is it?" - Raise their voice. “Grass, drug,” the man answers quickly. “*** Your mother,” is heard behind the scenes. “Forgive me all, please. To blame. Forgive everything, ”the man says and shrugs.

These two videos of the inspection of the 71-year-old Stavropol lawyer Sergei Marakov formed the basis of the criminal case against the illegal acquisition, storage and transportation without the purpose of selling drugs on a large scale (part 2 of Article 228 of the Criminal Code).

Spended later on behalf of one of the police officers delaying Marakov, the study showed that the package was 201.7 grams of cannabis. Examination of washing from the hands of an elderly lawyer also discovered a trace of the drug. The video, according to the materials, shot one of the witnesses - later it turned out that this was Marakov’s principal in a civilian dispute and, in principle, had no right to participate in the inspection.

Giving explanations on the day of detention, Marakov cited a rather implausible version of his appearance. He said that on the morning of December 8, 2020, he stood at a stop at the Lenta store, in which he went for groceries when a man approached him, introduced himself, put a bag in his hands and asked him to hold him until he went to the toilet. Marakov looked into the bag and saw marijuana there, after which he waited for Vakhu for twenty minutes and eventually took the drug for “personal use”. Returning home to Mitaev Street, he slept all day, and then went out for groceries to the nearest store, taking with him a bag of marijuana. When he returned to the apartment, he was stopped by police officers.

The lawyer later said that the drugs were thrown by the Chechen security forces. According to him, at about seven in the evening he returned home from the Halyal store, three men in civilian clothes were stopped at the entrance and asked to present documents, and when they were convinced that they were Marakov, they demanded to drive with them. At first, the lawyer, he said, was brought to the department in the Zavodsky district of Grozny, and then transported to another -. There they climbed to the third floor, where an unfamiliar man approached him, grabbed Marakov by the sleeve and stuffed him with a bag “with something smelly and crisp”. After the lawyer, they brought into the office, where the same man pulled out the bag, threw it on the table and opened it.

“I don’t know what it was in the package, not a name, nothing,” Marakov said during interrogation. - After that, the man who stuffed the aforementioned bag with the indicated substance under my jacket began to yell at me with the following words, literally: “It’s yours, you carried it with you, this is a drug, say that you took a random passerby and name any name, you won’t say it, we will not get out of here”. ”

The man recalled that his heart was ill, and he asked the police some medicine, but they did not help him. What happened further, he “badly distinguished” because of severe pain and simply signed in the documents.

These testimonies, as well as Marakov’s confrontations with the police who detained him, were allocated from the criminal case: in relation to the “unidentified persons”, they tested the falsification of evidence, illegal deprivation of liberty and exceeding official powers, but the case did not initiate the case.

Two detentions

Since 2004, Marakov worked in Chechnya, mainly engaged in cases of land disputes. He says that all this time he had no problems with law enforcement agencies, but shortly before his arrest, he began to write in the procedural documents on abuse of local authorities, for example, on the issuance to the mayor of formidable illegal building permits. “It lasted for six months, and then they arrested me,” he says.

After the inspection in the police department, Marakov was arrested for 10 days under an article on the small one, for which, according to the documents, he was also detained on December 8. It turns out that on that day Marakova was detained twice with a difference of half an hour, his lawyer Julia Antonova explains.

According to one report, at 22 hours 20 minutes, an employee of Abubakarov drew up an administrative protocol for a lawyer for being obscenely expressed and molested passers -by on Mitaev Street, after which he was delivered to the police department No. 1 of the Grozny. About two in the morning of Marakov, a medical examination was underway, which showed that the lawyer consumed alcohol.

According to the report in the materials of the case of drug storage, at 22 hours 30 minutes, Marakov was stopped on the same street of Mitaeva Police Ashaev, Khurtsaev and Zakaev. The man was confused and behaved suspiciously, they spoke in interrogations: inadvertently answered questions, did not present his passport and wanted to leave quickly. The police decided that Marakov was hiding something and delivered him to the same department No. 1. On the morning of December 9, the detainee was again brought to a medical examination - already according to the material of the audit, from which a criminal case was subsequently instituted - but then he was not established intoxication.

As a result, the lawyer is not 10, but 12 days - he was simply not released at the appointed time. As the acquaintance of Marakova, lawyer Nina Chernikova, who came to meet him, said during the interrogation, the police told her that he “would be released on Monday”, that is, until December 21. On the same day, the UK Chechnya opened a criminal case against a lawyer, it was instructed to investigate him in the investigation department in the Leninsky district of the Grozny.

“In fact, they detained him once, and they made the administrative material, but did not calculate the time,” says Marakova’s lawyer Julia Antonova. The protocol on petty hooliganism was needed to close Marakova immediately, and then collect material for initiating a criminal case - “this is the current practice in law enforcement agencies,” Antonova explains. She assumes that Marakova was not released after arrest only because the police simply did not know that in relation to special -subjects , which include lawyers, a different procedure for initiating criminal cases.

“This took even more time, because the materials had to be transferred not to the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but to the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee for the Chechen Republic,” says Antonova.

On December 21, 2020, the Leninsky District Court extended Marakov’s detention for 72 hours, and then, despite the investigator’s request for a guard, he sent him under house arrest - four days later the Supreme Court abolished this decision, and Marakov was in a pre -trial detention center.

“I was very ill all winter, I am chronic core, I almost died there,” he admits. However, according to him, his colleagues joined quite quickly to the case - the lawyer chamber of Stavropol took up Marakova. The head of the collegium, in which Marakov, Maxim Kravchenko, a lawyer from Chechnya Julia Antonova, as well as the Agora international human rights group Andrei Sabinin, who collaborates with the Agora International Human Rights Association, undertook to defend him. The head of the Bar Chamber of Chechnya came to support Marakov in court. “But in general, in Chechnya, lawyers are afraid to say anything about me publicly,” he says.

“[For me] it was a lawyer’s solidarity, of course,” his defender Antonov explains his participation in Marakov. - If it is likely to detain any lawyer by lawlessness, then tomorrow we will also find marijuana from notaries, judges. And it turns out that no one is safe from this? Plus, you need to take into account his advanced age, state of health. Therefore, I believe that it was, of course, infinite. ”

Interesting circumstances

Two videos of the inspection of Marakov on the day of detention, which formed the basis of the prosecution, were made by one of the witnesses - Aslan Zaburaev. During interrogation, he said that he likes to shoot “interesting circumstances” and therefore secretly recorded these videos, and at home transferred them to the disk - later, according to the investigation, the disk was recognized as material evidence. However, according to the video itself, it is obvious that the shooting is no secret: Marakov looks into the camera more than once and even winks, and the shooter comes close to the table, on which the lawyer laid out the bag with marijuana, and leads the phone to him, which could not go unnoticed for those present.

Aslan Zaburaev himself is interesting to others: since 2019, Marakov represents the interests of him and his mother in a civil case, in addition, the lawyer lived in the apartment of his own brother, however, giving explanations after the inspection, Zaburaev said that Marakov was unfamiliar to him. When a month later, at the request of Zaburaev’s defense, he was questioned again, he explained that he simply did not recognize his representative in the civil case. He repeated the same during the confrontation. Marakov himself claimed that it was a lie.

The lawyer suggested that his persecution could be connected with this civilian case - perhaps this was “the defendants took revenge on him,” he wrote in one of the complaints. In another, he called the “police agent” Zaburaev himself.

“Of course, we are inclined to associate the criminal prosecution of Marakov with his professional activity, but I would not have to associate him with the Zaburaev case,” says Antonov’s lawyer, “at the time of the initiation of a criminal case and the detention of Marakov, there was no judicial act on him, and, accordingly, there was no reason to take revenge on Marakov.”

According to her, Marakov spoke with his principal only once after his detention, and Aslan then admitted to his defender that "he had no other choice." Marakov’s lawyers are against the men to communicate, so that this is not regarded as an attempt to put pressure on the witness.

The investigation of the storage of marijuana could end in the spring, but lasted until August, since the prosecutor's office did not immediately approve the indictment, seeing a number of serious shortcomings in the case.

Significant violations were also indicated by the defenders of Marakov. For example, drug examinations and flushing of the hands were appointed before the initiation of a criminal case and not an investigator, but an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in addition, with decisions on their appointment Marakov, they familiarized themselves simultaneously with the results; A lawyer’s survey was carried out at night, which can be regarded as an attempt to exert psychological pressure on him; In the explanations of the witnesses, the investigator unlawfully made corrections; The investigation did not withdraw Zburaev’s phone as the source of video recordings of the inspection, and did not check whether it was really possible to conduct secret shooting from such an angle, and Zaburaev himself did not have the right to act as an understandable.

Lawyers asked to resume investigative actions, but the petition was refused. In September, the case was transferred to the Leninsky District Court of Grozny, by that time Marakov had been in custody for nine months.

Liberation

All this time, the defenders of an elderly lawyer sought his release from the insulator. In March, the Supreme Court of Chechnya canceled the decision of the district court on the imprisonment of Marakov to custody, but the lawyer was never released - by that time the first instance had already managed to extend the preventive measure, and the decision to extend the aircraft did not cancel.

“It turns out that there is no more election. But then they extended in the absence of an election of measure, ”Marakova defender Maxim Kravchenko told Lawyer Street.

For several months, lawyers tried to protest the decisions on the arrest in the cassation court, but the Supreme Court of Chechnya interfered with this. According to the defenders, the Armed Forces of the Republic intentionally canceled the decisions of the first instance and sent materials for a new consideration - therefore, lawyers simply could not appeal them in the cassation instance.

“The guards in the pre -trial detention center treated me respectfully, but when my mother died in September, I was not even allowed to call,” says Marakov. - She was a lying patient, she was 93 years old, my wife looked after her. I told her that she would not tell her mother that I was arrested, she would go crazy. They fell on the fact that in connection with the epidemic of coronavirus, transport from the republic is not released. ” He was released from the insulator a month after his mother’s death.

“On October 4, the Supreme Court of Chechnya canceled [the next] extension, the next day I filed a complaint with the cassation court without even applying [the decision of the Armed Forces] - this means a return of the complaint, but since I painted the entire“ procedural football ”, the judges of the cashier understood this and took the complaint on the same day. This usually takes a month or two, ”says Kravchenko.

“A miracle happened,” adds Marakov.

On October 11, the Fifth Cassation Court in Pyatigorsk considered six complaints of defenders at once on the decisions of the arrests of Marakov and released him on a recognizance not to leave - he left for Stavropol.

On October 22, the same court at the request of lawyers changed the territorial jurisdiction of the case - from the Leninsky District Court of the Terrible, where only one preliminary meeting managed to go, he was moved to the Oktyabrsky District Court of Stavropol.

“In his decision, the fifth cassation court just forms the basis of the transfer of the case that he lived for a long time on the territory of the Chechen Republic and, accordingly, is familiar with many officials, including judges, and how this fact can be influenced by the case,” explains Julia Antonova.

The decision to change the territorial jurisdiction was appealed by the prosecutor of the cassation department of the Prosecutor General’s Office. On December 22, the Supreme Court of Russia upheld the decision to transfer the consideration of the case to Stavropol.

Marakov, who worked in Chechnya for almost twenty years, says that he will never come to the republic again: “My legs will never be there again. I have already formed an opinion about me, and no one will prevent them from shinging heroin and anything else for me, cartridges and explosives, if I appear there. ”

Editor: Maria Klimova