Latering period

In Bashkortostan, the court finally accepted the application for the cancellation of the sentence of half a century ago. This was achieved after the intervention of the Constitutional Court

Sterlibashevsky Interdistrict Court will soon begin to consider the requirement of Fathullah Ishakov. The defense is sure that the verdict will be canceled, and the case will be sent for a new consideration. This is a story of unprecedented perseverance: a long -term human struggle from the hinterland can change the fate of many who are faced with biased justice.

Fathulle Iskhakov will turn 85 in the spring of this year. He has been trying to prove almost his whole life that he did not commit a crime for which in 1959 the People’s Court of the First section of the Miyakinsky district of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic sentenced him to 15 years in prison. Iskhakov was supposed to serve the appointed term in the colony followed by expulsion outside Bashkiria for several years.

The point of a fracture in the life of a resident of the village is large karkals, in the south of Bashkiria, came at the end of the spring of 1959. By the time Fathulla Badretdinovich had returned from the neighboring Chelyabinsk region, where he was serving two years in prison for the usual small leprosy - the theft of honey for the village children. He and several acquaintances received from 3 to 6 years in the colony, but Ishakova was released conventionally. Fathullah got a job on a local collective farm and returned to his former life.

On May 23, 1959, Iskhakov woke up from a sharp kick: the senior authorized Galiullin stood over his bed. It was he who investigated the previous case of the theft of honey. In addition, according to Fathullah, Galiullin could have unkind feelings for him: the policeman’s sister was once in love with Ishakov, but he left these feelings unanswered.

In the morning, the operative officer kept his jacket over only the awakened 22-year-old Fathulla. According to Galiullin,

On the clothes, a neighbor’s blood was found, whom someone tried to kill last night with two other girls. The traces allegedly led to the house of Ishakov.

The suspect now, according to him, learned about what happened only from Galiullin himself. Later it turned out that the unknown penetrated the house of the long -standing friend Iskhakov Raisa Rakhmatullin and several times hit his mother Sabir, sister Maryam and the girlfriend of the Asia family. It is noteworthy that before that Rakhmatullin appeared in the case of the theft of honey and testified against Ishakov. The court later considered that this was the reason for revenge.

According to the investigation, Fathulla went to kill the neighbors, taking an ax and wire with him. He found the girls asleep and hit every 2-3 times on the head with an ax, and then went home. Ufa lawyer Vitaly Burkin, who now defends the interests of Fathullah Ishakov in the courts, in a conversation with the “New” called the decision of the court of half -century ago defiantly absurd: it is difficult to imagine such a strong sleeping person. Nevertheless, the forensic examination confirmed the position of the prosecution: the victims received serious harm to health, the injury was caused by a chopping subject.

The results of the "examination" received a refutation only after almost 35 years. The doctor who organized the examination conducted only an external examination of the girls. There was simply no talk of an X -ray or other special equipment then. The scarcity of the examination methods and tools prevented a third-party and independent assessment of the conclusions of the forensic expert, and it was unlikely that anyone but the defendant was interested in this.

The court took place six months later. The case seemed ordinary: conflicts at the household level are considered with a frightening frequency, so the process took only three days. This time was enough for the judge to understand the materials of the case, which Ishakov himself calls falsified, and listen to several witnesses. Among them were young fellow villagers of the accused. They claimed that they saw him that night near the house of the victims. At the same time, the words of the victims themselves are also given the materials of the case, who say that they did not have time to make out the face of the attacker. However, crippled girls did not particularly argue with the position of investigation. In addition, the forensic examination found that the blood on Fathullah's jacket belongs to one of them. No genetic tests were then carried out, and the doctor made such a conclusion only by a blood group. Iskhakov himself assumes that the wounded herself could leave the spots on his jacket: when she came to her senses, Rachmatullina ran to her neighbor to ask for help, but did not find Fathullah at home. In the courtyard of Ishakov, they also found a wire, which supposedly made up a single whole with a piece of a metal thread, which was found at the crime scene. Yes, and the search dog brought Fathullah to the courtyard, which could also be explained by the late visit of Rachmatullina.

The court sentenced Iskhakov to 15 years in prison. He served the first year of punishment in a single cell in the city of Belebey, from where he was transferred to the Ufa correctional colony No. 9.

During the conclusion, Iskhakov did not waste time, but wrote many appeals to the security forces. But only in 1990, he nevertheless achieved the initiation of production due to the newly discovered circumstances.

The fact is that Ahat Afandyarov, one of the witnesses who told the court in the middle of the last century, that they saw Fathulla Ishakov in the light of the moon near the house of the victims, left Bashkiria and lived in the city of Chirchik in Uzbekistan, and Fathullah’s niece settled near this place. Her uncle, by that time, had already served the term, in the mid-1970s visited a relative and at the same time met with Apfandiyarov. He scattered, recalls Iskhakov in an interview with Mediazone *:

“He says that he was more worried about what he said in the court, and is ready to completely tell how everything worked out. I say: “Well, then write a statement, I will tell the prosecutor,” Fathullah recalls the meeting.

Aspandiyarov assured his new testimony from a notary. He added that he and his friends knew about the innocence of Ishakov, and the testimony against the defendant was given under the pressure of the police. Just then, the company of friends was accused of petty hooliganism and arrested for two weeks: they wrote on the fence Maryam, for the attack on which Iskhakov condemned, indecent words because she did not please them with something.

But even certified confessions in perjury were not immediately used to rehabilitate Ishakov.

The main factor for re-consideration of the case in the 1990s was the recognition of another witness-Nail Saitbattalova-in the attack on girls. He said that he did not plan to kill them, but only wanted to “disfigure” Maryam, who once refused to start a relationship with him. He did not see in the dark, who is who, and decided to cut all the girls at once, explains Saitbattalov at once.

In 1993, a second medical examination was carried out: in 1959, the expert incorrectly determined the degree of harm to health: the girls did not have a skull fractures. The defense then indicated that Iskhakov was accused of attempted murder with an ax, but it is difficult to imagine how such an object could leave only cuts on the face of the victims.

Despite the newly discovered circumstances, the production, begun in 1990, stopped three years later. According to the lawyer, this was explained by the fact that information about the need to cancel the sentences was not confirmed. Fathulla accuses himself of this: he says, he did not "give up." The case was again discovered only in 2009. At that time, the security forces already had in their hands the confession of the four witnesses who lied to the court in 1959.

In such a situation, the law requires criminal proceedings for perjury and the expert’s incorrect opinion, but all the deadlines have expired for this. The decision on the refusal to initiate criminal cases for the statute of a time, which was supposed to automatically lead to the justification of Ishakov, was issued by investigators several times, but the prosecutor's office returned it back. The supervisory authority each time invented more and more formal grounds.

Finally, in 2015, the prosecutor of Bashkiria Andrei Nazarov (he held his position in 2013-2019) suddenly agreed with investigators and sent a conclusion to the Supreme Court. It said that in the middle of the last century the court brought out the illegal sentenced to Iskhakov,

which must be rehabilitated.

But on the day when the Supreme Court of Bashkiria was already preparing to consider the conclusion, the prosecutor Nazarov suddenly withdrew him and abandoned his demands. According to lawyers, he did not have such a right, but the court did not even notice this.

In 2015, lawyer Vitaliy Burkin, about whom Novye already wrote (No. 63 of June 14, 2019), took up the case. The Investigative Committee tried three times from the prosecutor's office to consent to the refusal to initiate the case against witnesses for prescription. Burkin calls the battle between the security forces: one of the ranks of the Investigative Committee even complained to the prosecutor's office Alexander Bastrykin.

The prosecutor's office referred to the fact that, according to the law, to refuse to institute criminal proceedings, it was necessary to get consent from the suspect. Such a document was drawn up many years ago, but he did not satisfy the prosecutor’s office, and over the past half a century, all false witnesses, except for one, died. In 2018, the supervisory authority, apparently, was tired of refusing investigators and simply finally stopped the matter.

Iskhakov complained to the prosecutor: he demanded to cancel the conclusion and, accordingly, allow us to launch the rehabilitation process. But it was so easy to achieve the ultimate goal: all instances, up to the cassation, refused to do this. Only in the Supreme Court of Russia managed to prove that the prosecutor’s decision on the termination of the case is illegally. It would seem that now the sentence of half a century ago should be canceled by inertia, but the Supreme Court did not say anything about this in his decision.

Last spring, Burkin filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court, which made a decision at the end of 2021. The court found that the lower instances and Bashkir prosecutors incorrectly interpreted the law: Iskhakov’s sentence is subject to revision and no prosecutor’s appeal was needed for this. There are enough former court decisions that have recognized the non -fidelity of the supervisory authority.

The December decision of the Constitutional Court is an important precedent. The expert community believes that it can radically change judicial practice and help illegally convicted. Until now, the head of the Criminal Procedure Code on the cancellation of sentences for newly opened and new circumstances has practically not worked. This was a great obstacle for the rehabilitation of the innocent.

On January 11, Iskhakov appealed to the court with a request to revise the sentence for half a century ago. As Vitaly Burkin was informed in the Sterlibashevsky Interdistrict Court of Bashkiria, the application has already been adopted for consideration. He is sure that, taking into account the evidence, the verdict will be in favor of Fathullah. Together with the cancellation of the sentence, the case will be sent for a new consideration to the same inter -district court.

Aidar Akhmadiev, especially for "New"

*Recognized as a foreign agent