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“FSB is a terrorist” by Rakel Stammer.
\nIn Russia, the Russian Federal Security Service—the FSB, which is descended from the KGB—has set a new precedent for extracting false confessions from arrestees by means of torture, threats, and blatantly planted evidence. This week, a Russian court found seven defendants guilty of terrorist conspiracy on the basis of evidence derived from these methods; they have been sentenced to up to 18 years in prison apiece. For years, governments all over the world have unsuccessfully attempted to make fabricated conspiracy charges stick. Now, utilizing this new model based in flagrant brutality and dishonesty, the Russian government has succeeded in setting a new precedent. Police exchange tactics and strategies on a global basis. As the world slides faster towards tyranny, we can be sure that we will see these tactics of repression spread outside Russia if we don’t mobilize effectively against them now.
\n\nConsequently, in concert with the Russian solidarity organization supporting these prisoners, we are calling for a week of solidarity actions February 22-29.
\n\nFor more background on the case and the pattern of trumped up conspiracy cases throughout Europe and the US, read our earlier analysis, “Why the Torture Cases in Russia Matter.”
\n\nWe must not forget the anarchists and anti-fascists suffering repression in Russia! We are calling for people to take action of all forms to express support for these prisoners, to protest the prison system, and to spread information about the use of torture as an instrument of repression in Russia.
\n\n “FSB is a terrorist” by Rakel Stammer.
\nOn February 10, in Penza, a town 630 kilometers from Moscow, the court passed sentence on seven people accused of organizing the so-called “anarchist terrorist community ‘Network.’” The entire case is based on confessions the defendants were forced to agree to via intense torture as well as weapons planted by police and an extremely tenuous accusation that they were “planning to plan terrorist actions to overthrow the government of Russia.” Considering that we are talking about a “crime” without victims that involved no action and no plan, the sentences decreed by the court are shockingly draconian. Dmitry Pchelintsev and Ilya Shakursky, the supposed organizers of this fabricated “Network,” were sentenced to 18 years and 16 years in prison, respectively. The others have been sentenced as follows: Arman Sagynbaev 6 years, Andrei Chernov 14 years, Vasily Kuksov 9 years, Mikhail Kulkov 10 years, and Maxim Ivankin 13 years of imprisonment.
\n\nScientists, journalists, human rights defenders, and other groups in Russia have protested and demanded that the sentence be repealed.
\n\nInternational solidarity is especially important at this moment because the “Network case” is not over. In St. Petersburg, two more people, Viktor Filinkov and Julian Boyarshinov, await trial on related charges. The next court hearings are planned for February 25-28. This is why we ask that solidarity actions take place the last week of February.
\n\nMany other anarchists and anti-fascists in Russia are experiencing repression and torture, including Azat Miftahov, Ilia Romanov, Egor Lesnyh, Evgeny Karakashev, and Kirill Kuzminkin. They too deserve our attention and support.
\n\nIf there is a Russian consulate or embassy in your city, consider organizing an action in front of it! Failing that, you could consider what other appropriate venues or targets are available, or simply paint a beautiful banner and hold a public gathering to inform people of the situation.
\n\nEmail action reports to rupression@protonmail.com or via Telegram to @RUPRESSION_bot or Rupression social networks.
\n\nWe will inform the prisoners about any actions that take place.
\n\nFor more information about the Network case, details of financial support and prisoners addresses: rupression.com
\n\nYOUR TORTURE WILL NOT KILL OUR IDEAS!
\n\nThis call is also available in Русский (Russian).
\n\nTaking a Global View of Repression
\n\nWhy the Torture Cases in Russia Matter
\n\nAnother Wave of Arrests and Torture against Russian Anarchists
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/solidarity-with-the-tortured-anarchists-and-anti-fascists-in-russia-poster-1.jpg\")
Click the image above for downloadable PDF.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/solidarity-with-the-tortured-anarchists-and-anti-fascists-in-russia-poster-2.jpg\")
Click the image above for downloadable PDF.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/solidarity-with-the-tortured-anarchists-and-anti-fascists-in-russia-poster-3.jpg\")
Click the image above for downloadable PDF.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/6.jpg\")
In Moscow, at the end of August 10, plainclothes police officers arrested the anarchist Alexei Polikhovich on his way home from Russia’s largest opposition demonstration since 2011. A local Moscow court formally charged Alexei with “petty hooliganism” and sentenced him to 13 days in jail. The arrest stemmed from a combative and passionate speech Alexei gave to thousands in Moscow that day. You can follow updates on his legal status here. We consider it especially important to support Russian anarchists in view of the recent slew of torture cases in Russia and the other risks that dissidents face there. Likewise, we consider international solidarity between anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist movements to be the only hope for humanity, in contrast to all liberals, nationalists, and supposed leftists who throw in their lot with one faction of the global ruling class or another.
\n\nAlexey Polikhovich speaking at the demonstration of August 10 in Moscow (with English subtitles).
\nThe massive rally on August 10 was the culmination of weeks of both authorized and unauthorized demonstrations in Moscow and elsewhere around Russia. The wave of demonstrations began on July 20, when 20,000 people gathered in Moscow to demand “fair” and “clean” local elections. A slew of liberal opposition candidates have been barred from running in the Moscow elections coming up on September 8. The July 20 demonstration was called to oppose what the opposition sees as collusion between the ruling United Russia Party, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, President Vladimir Putin, and their allies to prevent liberal opposition candidates from running.
\n\nWhile July 20 was large but rather quiet, one week later, on July 27, an unauthorized protest in front of Moscow City Hall took a different turn. Between 1000-1200 people were arrested out of a crowd of 3500, which included 700 journalists. The heavy-handed brutality against the demonstrators by the Moscow special police forces, the OMON, was nothing particularly new. Neither was the array of absurd charges, some carrying heavy fines and others potential jail time, that the Russian state doled out.
\n\nSurely this added to both the anxiety and resolve of those who gathered on August 3 for another unauthorized opposition protest, at which another 1000 people were detained. Footage circulated widely on social media showing the brute force of Moscow’s OMON.
\n\nRegardless of the liberal politics of the Russian opposition, these circumstances render the impetus for Alexei’s speech self-evident. Below, we present the text of Alexei’s speech that he posted on the internet prior to the demonstration.
\n\nFor the benefit of those outside Russia, here is a brief guide to some of the references Alexei Polikhovich makes in his speech.
\n\nBolotnaya Square Case - The Bolotnaya Square Case stemmed from the Russian opposition movement of 2011-2012, in which hundreds of thousands of people participated. On May 6, 2012, the “March of Millions” ended with clashes in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. A number of people were arrested, including Alexei Polikhovich and anti-fascist Alexei Gaskarov. This made the Bolotnaya Square Case synonymous with the struggle to free Russian political prisoners.
\n\nBerkut - The Berkut were the infamous riot police in Kyiv, Ukraine loyal to the regime of Russian-supported Viktor Yanukovich, responsible for policing and using lethal force against protestors during the Euromaidan uprising in 2013-14.
\n\nCommander Sergei Kusyuk - A former Berkut officer who oversaw operations against Euromaidan, Sergei Kusyuk is now working with the OMON in Moscow and was seen at one of the recent protests.
\n\nIvan Golyunov - Russian police sparked a movement when they arrested the journalist Ivan Golyunov under false pretenses, planting drugs on him. His investigation into the corruption behind the Moscow funeral business sparked the police-mafia collusion leading to his false arrest. After considerable outcry, he was eventually released. He has become a symbolic figure for the opposition.
\n\nAlexei Navalny - Alexei Navalny is Russia’s most famous opposition/anti-corruption activist. As a liberal, he flirts with right-wing nationalism, and has produced famous investigations into Russian politicians and oligarchs revealing their unscrupulous earnings. He is able to mobilize a large base; as a consequence, he is regularly arrested for his opposition activities.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/14/1.jpg\")
Alexei Polikhovich was jailed as a political prisoner in the Bolotnaya Square Case.
\nHello everyone.
\n\nMy name is Alexei Polikhovich, and I spent three years, three months, and three days in prison because of the Bolotnaya Square riot. I was imprisoned for grabbing the hands of a riot cop who was beating protesters. And now I’m standing in front of you because I am furious.
\n\nI am furious that history is repeating itself. I am furious because anonymous people in helmets, masks, and armor are beating defenseless people on the streets of Moscow. They are beating them again and again they will go unpunished. I am furious that Moscow is occupied by these storm troopers who consider us all enemies of Russia.
\n\nI saw them. I saw a man in a helmet with a baton furiously beating someone who was lying on the ground and screaming. I saw hordes of those people in helmets attacking people who were standing there peacefully. The only thing that was dangerous on July 27 was the law enforcement officers. They alone.
\n\nThey learned to beat us—and then they learned to play victim in the courts and say how they were injured by a thrown plastic cup or from the touch of our warm, tender hands, just like they hurt from the chant “Cops are the shame of Russia.” They cry in their anonymous cowardly Telegram channels that they are the real Russian men and we are paid provocateurs. Hey men, what is it like to play victim in the courts against students, graduate students, bloggers, TV directors, volunteers? What will your children say about these stories when they grow up? Your children will hate you. Children of cops—hate cops!
\n\nI am furious that once every seven years, the ship of the Investigative Committee sails into Moscow and whisks young people away to the Cretan labyrinth like a sacrifice to the Minotaur. To insure that Athens—Moscow—remains a peaceful city of barbecue festivals. So that the fugitives and traitors of Berkut can safely practice fencing with batons on our bodies. So that Colonel Kusyuk can still wear his mustache on our land and command the crackdowns on peaceful demonstrations.
\n\nThey come every seven years to sacrifice us. And so it is. Today I am furious and want you to feel the outrage too. I want you—all of us—to become Ariadne for the thirteen guys who have already been imprisoned in the riot case so far. I believe that we can handle it. After [the case of Ivan] Golunov, I believe that we have the strength to throw down a thread that will guide them out of the labyrinth of prisons, courts, and police brutality.
\n\nHow many people are here now? Many thousands. I want to see these thousands under the windows of the Basmanny Court [the court that ordered the arrests]—here, we are very close to the Basmanny Court. I am not a supporter of Navalny, I do not believe in elections, I am just a Russian anarchist. A simple Russian man. I want us to shout to all the Kusyuks, the Moscow election commission, riot police, cops, judges, and bureaucrats. You are crazy fucks! They are crazy fucks! They are crazy fucks!
\n\nSupport the people in prison. Come home and write a letter to them in jail. Donate money for food and the lawyer fees. Find the person with a donation box in the crowd now—it is my accomplice from the Bolotnaya case, Volodya Akimenkov—give him funds for political prisoners. Talk about it and go to the court; the protests beneath the windows of the court should never stop.
\n\nRemember their names. Remember their names—not as the names of victims or heroes, but as the names of your friends who will be home soon. Shout them out:
\n\nAlexey Minyailo
\nVladislav Barabanov
\nKirill Zhukov
\nEgor Zhukov
\nIvan Podkopaev
\nSamariddin Radzhapov
\nEvgeny Kovalenko
\nSergey Abanichev
\nDaniel Conon
\nSergey Fomin
\nAydar Gubaidulin
\nDanila Begletz
\nDmitry Vasiliev
\nPavel Ustinov
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/14/2.jpg\")
We affirm Alexei’s courage against the brutally repressive Russian state.
\nПривет, люди
\n\nМеня зовут Алексей Полихович, и я отсидел три года, три месяца и три дня по делу о массовых беспорядках на Болотной площади. Я отсидел за то, что хватал омоновцев за руки, которыми они били демонстрантов. И сейчас я стою перед вами, потому что я в ярости.
\n\nЯ в ярости от того, что история повторяется. Я в ярости от того, что на улицах Москвы анонимные люди в шлемах, масках и доспехах бьют беззащитных. Снова бьют, и снова оказываются безнаказанными. Я в ярости от того, что Москва оккупирована штурмовиками, которые считают нас всех врагами России.
\n\nЯ видел их. Я видел человека в шлеме, остервенело бьющего лежащего и кричащего парня дубинкой. Я видел стаи таких людей в шлемах, набрасывающихся на мирно стоящих людей. Единственную опасность для кого-то 27 июля представляли именно сотрудники правоохранительных органов. Именно они.
\n\nОни научились бить нас - и они научились потом терпилить в судах о том, как им больно было от брошенного пластикового стаканчика, от прикосновений наших теплых нежных рук, как им было больно от лозунга “Мусора - позор России”. Они плачут в своих анонимных трусливых телеграм-каналах, что это они - настоящие русские мужики, а мы - проплаченные провокаторы. Эй, мужики, каково вам быть терпилами в судах по студентам, кандидатам наук, блогерам, телережиссерам, волонтерам? Что скажут об этих историях ваши дети, когда вырастут? Ваши дети будут вас ненавидеть. Дети ментов - ненавидят ментов!
\n\nЯ в ярости от того, что раз в семь лет в Москву приплывает корабль Следственного комитета и забирает молодых людей в Критский лабиринт, в жертву Минотавру. Чтобы Афины - чтобы Москва - оставалась смирным городом шашлычных фестивалей. Чтобы беглецы и предатели из Беркута могли безнаказанно упражняться в фехтовании дубинкой на наших телах. Чтобы полковник Кусюк по-прежнему мог носить свои усы по нашей земле и командовать разгонами мирных демонстраций.
\n\nОни приходят раз в семь лет и берут с нас всех эту жертву. Так вот. Сегодня я в ярости и хочу, чтобы вы тоже ощутили ярость. Я хочу, чтобы вы - мы все - стали Ариадной для пока тринадцати ребят, которых уже посадили по делу о массовых беспорядках. Я верю, что мы справимся. После Голунова - я верю - что у нас есть силы, чтобы бросить нить, которая выведет ребят из лабиринта тюрем, судов и мусорского беспредела.
\n\nСколько здесь сейчас людей? Много тысяч. Я хочу видеть эти тысячи под окнами Басманного суда - здесь совсем недалеко до Басманного суда. Я не сторонник Навального, я не верю в выборы, я просто русский анархист. Простой русский человек. Я хочу, чтобы мы сейчас прокричали всем кусюкам, мосгоризбиркомам, омонам, ментам, судьям и чинушам. Вы охуели! Они охуели! Они охуели!
\n\nПоддерживайте людей в тюрьме. Придите домой и напишите им письмо в СИЗО. Скиньте денег на передачи и адвоката. Найдите в толпе сейчас человека с коробкой - это мой подельник по Болотному делу Володя Акименков, скиньте ему на политзаключенных. Говорите об этом и идите в суд - митинг под окнами суда должен не заканчиваться.
\n\nПомните их имена. Помните их имена не как имена жертв или героев, а как имена ваших друзей, которые скоро будут дома. Кричите их:
\n\nАлексей Миняйло
\nВладислав Барабанов
\nКирилл Жуков
\nЕгор Жуков
\nИван Подкопаев
\nСамариддин Раджапов
\nЕвгений Коваленко
\nСергей Абаничев
\nДаниил Конон
\nСергей Фомин
\nАйдар Губайдулин
\nДанила Беглец
\nДмитрий Васильев
\nПавел Устинов
On February 1, 2019, officers of the FSB, the Russian state security apparatus descended from the KGB, arrested a dozen people in the latest wave of their campaign of repression against accused anarchists throughout the country. After brutally torturing them over the following 24 hours in order to force them to agree to incriminating statements, they released 11 of them. The twelfth arrestee, Azat Miftakhov, temporarily disappeared within the legal system while the FSB continued torturing him and refusing his lawyer access to him. This is just the most recent of a series of events in which the FSB have systematically employed torture to force arrestees to sign false confessions in order to fabricate “terrorist conspiracies” involving activists. This pattern will continue until people put enough pressure on the Russian government to discourage it from disappearing and torturing young people—or else, if this does not occur, until the secret police serving other governments, emboldened by the successes of the FSB, escalate their own use of torture and fabricated “conspiracies” to suppress activism in other countries as well.
\n\nThe latest innovation of the FSB is to torture arrestees into making false statements to state media channels as well as police. After FSB agents tortured him with electroshock for two hours in the back of a car, arrestee Daniel Galkin was dragged before a reporter from the state television “First Channel” (Perviy Canal) and ordered to make statements discrediting the anarchist movement. All this is familiar from the methods that the state used against dissident communists in the 1930s under Stalin. Upon his release, Galkin made a public statement about the torture to which he was subjected and the methods the FSB used to terrorize him.
\n\n\n\n\n“I will speak, I will express what happened however I can, through all possible means and resources, I will do everything I can to tell people. I sleep very badly. I sleep and it seems to me that they will come after me, knock the door down and take me somewhere to the forest, because in Russia this is done to people, to activists.”
\n\n-Daniel Galkin on his experience of torture and being forced to make false statements to the Russian state media
\n
Azat Miftakhov is a graduate student of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University, where his colleagues have signed an open letter of support for him, reproduced below. Extensive reporting on these events, including interviews with several of the tortured arrestees, is available here in Russian. For more background on the torture cases in Russia, read the full report we published last year. To keep up with Russian solidarity organizing around these cases, visit rupression.com.
\n\nThis text reached us from Russian comrades who coordinate legal support and solidarity for anarchists targeted by the FSB.
\n\nOn February 1, in Moscow, the Russian FSB raided several flats and arrested 10 people on charges of “conspiracy.” All of them were released after day-long interrogation and physical torture, except one person, Azat Miftakhov. He is accused of “fabricating explosives” and being a member of a “radical anarchist organization Narodnaya Samooborona” (Peoples’ Self-Defense). Over the past year, this organization has become the main target of police repression in Russia: several accused members of the group have been arrested, tortured, or threatened. Some had to leave the country under threat of long prison terms and torture.
\n\nOne of the arrested anarchists, Daniil Galkin, has reported about the torture. After his arrest, he was beaten and tortured with electroshock in the police car for two or three hours. Under torture, Galkin was forced to say that Azat Miftakhov was an anarcho-communist and took part in anarchist actions. Galkin was forced to give an interview that was compromising anarchists to a federal TV-channel “First Channel” (Perviy Canal), and to promise to “collaborate with the police by providing information about anarchist actions.”
\n\nIn the police station of Balashiha in the Moscow region, Galkin saw Azat: he was threatened by the FSB officers, and his arms were wringed. According to Galkin, Azat “did not look like a human being” as a consequence of the torture. He also said he heard the screams of one of the arrested women activists, who was kept in the room next to his. He also heard that one of the arrested anarchists had cut his veins and taken pills in order to avoid further torture in hopes of not giving any information about other comrades. According to other witnesses and journalists, that person was Azat Miftakhov.
\n\nAzat was kept in detention in that police station until late at night; he was not permitted to see his lawyer. At night, he was dragged out of the police station right past his lawyer, who had been waiting for him, and conducted in an unknown direction. We do not know anything about his actual location, as of February 2 at 6 pm. We think he’s still being tortured and forced to give information about his comrades and himself.
\n\nWe ask for solidarity actions, the spreading of this news, and financial support.
\n\nIn Russia (and the recently annexed territories, such as Crimea), there are currently several penal cases in which anarchists are facing “terrorist” charges. These include the “Network” case, the case against anarchist Vyatcheslav Lukichev, the case against anarchist Kirill Kuzminkin, and the case against Crimean anarchist Evgeniy Karakashev.
\n\nIn order to donate to the legal defense of Azat Miftakhov and other Russian activists:
\n\nYou can send donations via PayPal to abc-msk@riseup.net with comment “for Azat,” or use this Paypal.
\n\nInternational wire transfer:
\n\nSWIFT SABRRUMM
\nAccount number : 40817810238050715588
\nName : AKIMENKOV VLADIMIR GEORGIEVITCH
Please indicate “solidarity donation” when making your transfer.
\n\nA documentary about the Russian “Network” case of torture and fabricated “terrorist conspiracy” from rupression.com.
\nThe following text was published in Russian and English here.
\n\nConsidering different sources, on February 1, 2019, Azat Miftakhov, postgraduate of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University, was detained on suspicion of manufacturing explosives. He was tortured by the police and Russian Security Service; according to the words of Daniil Galkin, who was detained together with Azat, “he no longer looked like a human being.” Torture had been used to obtain testimony against Miftakhov. Security forces are concealing Miftakhov’s location from his lawyer Svetlana Sidorkina. At the time of this publication, she was not admitted to her client. Consequently, according to information from the lawyer and other detainees, Azat tried to cut his veins.
\n\nAzat Miftakhov just started his mathematical career: his first mathematical paper, “On weak convergence of finite-dimensional and infinite-dimensional distributions of random processes” in collaboration with Professor Vladimir I. Bogachev, was published in 2016.
\n\nWe, the undersigned representatives of the mathematical community and others in solidarity with them, are extremely concerned about the current situation. We demand that the authorities report the location of mathematician Azat Miftakhov and his health status immediately, and admit the lawyer to see him. We also demand that they stop torturing Miftakhov and the other detainees, and we call for a transparent and fair trial.
\n\nSignatories:
\n\nBalaram Usov
\nRoman Krutowski
\nIlya Dumansky
\nRodion Deev
\nKonstantin Loginov
\nDmitriy Korshunov
\nBogdan Zavyalov
\nAnna Dmitrieva
Update I: Azat Mivtahov has been found in the police station in Balashikha, Moscow region. The investigator claims he was arrested only at 19:10 pm on February, 2. Azat and his lawyer confirmed the use of torture.
\n\nUpdate II: Azat was finally brought to court to be arrested on the accusation of making explosives. The first court appearance was postponed for 72 hours, because the investigators had done such a poor job of preparing the documents. Than Azat was “released” and immediately arrested under completely different charges of hooliganism committed by a group. This is a year-old case about a broken window and smoke bomb in the office of Putin’s party, “United Russia.” The only proof in this case against Azat is the testimony of a secret witness who claims to remember only Azat’s “expressive” eyebrows. The second court appearance was also postponed for 72 hours for the same reason; then they arrested Azat and put him in pretrial detention.
\n\nIt seems that they have no evidence against Azat but are using any excuse to keep him arrested.
\n\n Click the image above for downloadable PDF.
\n Click the image above for downloadable PDF.
\n Click the image above for downloadable PDF.
\nA year ago, the Russian Federal Security Service—the FSB—initiated a wave of repression, arresting and brutally torturing anarchists in order to force them to sign false statements admitting to participating in a supposed terrorist group invented by the Russian authorities. The ensuing crackdowns put tremendous pressure on anarchists around Russia; you can learn more about the cases and solidarity efforts here. Today, a young Russian anarchist died in an attack on the FSB headquarters in Arkhangelsk. The FSB has gotten its wish, bullying young Russians into carrying out bombings rather than engaging in public organizing. Below, we present a rough translation of the initial report from Russian anarchists, including the young man’s personal claim of responsibility.
\n\nThe deceased, Zhlobitsky Mikhail Vasilyevich, also known as Valerian Panov, was a student at the Arkhangelsk Polytechnic University. He was 17 years old.
\n\nAs we have previously emphasized, we don’t believe that individual attacks on specific authority figures will suffice to abolish the institutional power of the state and capitalism. But the Russian state has left precious few alternatives for those who desire a means of bringing about positive change. At the conclusion of a week that has seen a tremendous upswing in authoritarian repression and fascist violence around the world, from Pittsburgh to Brazil, it is time for us to discuss how we can collectively respond to the escalating violence of the state and its fascist supporters.
\n\nIt also bears mentioning that the FSB is directly descended from the KGB, showing the continuity of oppression between state socialism and capitalism. Under Putin and Stalin, under Kennedy and Trump, the machinery of state tyranny remains the same.
\n\nWe respectfully bid farewell to this young man who took a stand against repression, torture, and deceit, doing the best he could with the few options that were available to him. Let’s organize together to give people like him a reason to live. Please go to the support page for those targeted by the FSB operation.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/10/31/1.jpg\")
Visual survey report on the torture that the FSB inflicted on arrestee Igor Shishkin, from the Public Monitoring Commission findings.
\nFrom bo-ak.org:
\n\nAt 8:52 am, at the entrance to the FSB Directorate for the Arkhangelsk Region, an explosion took place. The anarchist rebel, Zhlobitsky Mikhail Vasilyevich, also known on the app Telegram as Valerian Panov, detonated a bomb and died in the explosion. This is the first case of anarchists carrying out such an attack on the FSB in 19 years; the previous attack was organized in 1999 at the reception of the FSB in Moscow by the New Revolutionary Alternative organization.
\n\nThe comrade died as a result of the explosion, also causing injuries of varying severity to three officers of the FSB.
\n\nSeven minutes before the explosion, Valerian left a message in one of the anarchist chats via Telegram, in which he described the reasons for his action:
\n\n\n\n\nComrades, now in the FSB building in Arkhangelsk there will be a terrorist attack, the responsibility for which I take upon myself. The reasons are clear to you. Since the FSB fabricates cases and tortures people, I decided to go for it. Most likely, I will die because of the explosion, because I have initiated the charge directly by pressing the button attached to the bomb cover. Therefore, you are requested to spread information about the terrorist attack: who committed it and what the reasons were.
\n\nWell, sort of like everything. I wish you to go unswervingly and uncompromisingly towards our goal. Light to you, the future of anarchist communism!
\n
We bow our heads before the heroism of our comrade. We were not acquainted in person, but through communication, he left an impression of himself as an intelligent and well-prepared person who was not apathetic, who aspired to go beyond the swamp of the official opposition struggle that is now mainstream.
\n\nWe are sorry that he had no other choice, no way to do more damage to the enemy with less harm to himself.
\n\nYet be that as it may, he lived as he thought was right, and died as a hero in the struggle for our common ideals.
\n\nAs the Kurds say—Şehid namirin! Heroes do not die!
\n\nWhy the Torture Cases in Russia Matter
\n\nRussian Anti-Fascist Reveals Violence, Humiliation, and Threats in Pre-Trial Detention
\n\nThis statement appeared on the blog of an anarchist prisoner in Korydallos Prison (Attiki, Greece), on October 31, 2018.
\n\nThe war is not just lined-up armies, militaristic reveilles and orders, crowds that shake as they are mowed down by machine guns, massacres that are caused when soulless technicians press cold buttons, armored tanks’ parades and bombers’ flyovers. The war is also the passion, the desire, the rage of the person who decides to strike this murderous world order here, there, elsewhere; this wild thirst for attacking the value system of the rotten civilization that dominates everything around us. The war is also the desperate screams of the lonesome against domination. The war is also the individual choice in the dark armed with detonators and gunpowder to act against barbarism and mass complicity. Armed with a decision engraved deep in the heart, a decision that tightens the teeth in determination until the gums bleed, a decision thundering with the power of a thousand explosions: “I am fighting to the end.”
\n\nHonor forever to the 17-year-old anarchist Mikhail Zhlobitsky, who fell detonating a bomb in Russia’s secret intelligence offices (FSB).
\n\nLong Live Anarchy!
\n\nUntil every cage is empty and we meet again in a new world!
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2018/03/26/why-the-torture-cases-in-russia-matter-how-the-tactics-that-the-russian-state-uses-against-anarchists-could-spread", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2018/03/26/why-the-torture-cases-in-russia-matter-how-the-tactics-that-the-russian-state-uses-against-anarchists-could-spread", "title": "Why the Torture Cases in Russia Matter : How the Tactics that the Russian State Uses against Anarchists Could Spread", "summary": "The Russian security services are using torture to force false confessions in an attempt to frame anarchists as participants in terrorist networks. If it works, other police may try the same tactics.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/header-2.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/header-2.jpg", "date_published": "2018-03-26T18:54:00Z", "date_modified": "2025-10-10T16:26:53Z", "tags": [ "Russia", "torture" ], "content_html": "Grisly news keeps coming in from Russia about the activities of the Russian Federal Security Service—the FSB, which is descended from the KGB. In account after account, anarchists and anti-fascists describe how the FSB kidnapped them, planted weapons in their cars, and used torture to force them to sign false confessions admitting to participating in an obviously invented terror network.
\n\nWhy should we care about the Russian torture cases, specifically? At first, it may strike people in the US and Western Europe as yet another abstract tragedy, just one more call for international solidarity with unfortunates in a faraway land. But the stakes here are much more significant. What is taking place in Russia is a nightmare scenario that could recur closer and closer to us if we don’t take it seriously.
\n\nFor decades now, the security agencies of many different countries have repeatedly attempted to fabricate national and international “terrorist conspiracies” in order to frame anarchists. To date, all of these efforts have been embarrassing failures. Now, the Russian secret police have introduced an innovation: by kidnapping anarchists without warning, planting weapons in their cars, and torturing them until they agree to sign forged “confessions,” they hope to finally make charges of participating in a “terrorism network” stick. If they succeed, we can expect to see other police agencies across the world emulate their tactics.
\n\nIn the following analysis, we will review the history of this model of repression, explore the details of the Russian torture cases, and outline how we can respond. The Appendix lists the details of the arrests and torture in chronological order and provides corroborating evidence of the reports herein.
\n\nWe’ve also prepared posters expressing solidarity with those targeted in this wave of repression. Please print them out and paste them up to draw attention to this case. The same posters are available in Spanish here.
\n\n Click the image above for downloadable PDF.
\n Click the image above for downloadable PDF.
\n Click the image above for downloadable PDF.
\n\n\n\nThen the man in gloves cranked the dynamo. The current flowed to my knees. My calf muscles contracted, and I was seized by paralytic pain. I screamed. My back and head convulsed against the wall. They put a jacket between my naked body and the stone wall. This went on for about ten seconds, but when it was happening, it felt like an eternity to me.
\n\nOne of them spoke to me.
\n\n“I don’t know the word ‘no.’ I don’t remember it. You should forget it. You got me?” he said literally.
\n\n“Yes,” I replied.
\n\n“That’s the right answer. Attaboy, Dimochka,” he said.
\n\nThe gauze was stuck in my mouth again, and I was shocked four times, three seconds each time. […] Then I was tossed onto the floor. Since one of my legs was tied to the foot of the bench, when I fell, I seriously banged up my knees, which bled profusely. My shorts were pulled off. I was lying on my stomach. They tried to attach the wires to my genitals. I screamed and asked them to stop brutalizing me.
\n\n“You’re the leader,” they repeated.
\n\n“Yes, I’m the leader,” I said to make them stop torturing me.
\n\n“You planned terrorist attacks.”
\n\n“Yes, we planned terrorist attacks,” I would reply.
\n\nOne of the men who measured my pulse put his balaclava on me so I would not see them. At one point, I lost consciousness for awhile. […] After they left, a Federal Penitentiary Service officer entered the room and told me to get dressed. He took me back to my solitary confinement cell.
\n\nThe next day, October 29, 2017, I broke the tank on the toilet and used the shards to slash my arms at the wrists and elbows, and my neck in order to stop the torture. There was a lot of blood from the cuts on my clothes and the floor, and I collapsed onto the floor. They probably saw what I did via the CCTV camera installed in the cell. Prison staffers entered my cell and gave me first aid. Then the prison’s psychologist, Vera Vladimirovna, paid me a visit.
\n\n—From the transcript of attorney Oleg Zaitsev’s interview with arrestee Dmitry Pchelintsev about his experience of torture in FSB custody
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/4.jpg\")
Wounds inflicted on Ilya Kapustin by torture with electrical shock.
\nThe story begins in Penza in October 2017, when the FSB arrested six anti-fascists who sometimes played airsoft. According to the FSB, all the detainees were members of the unimaginatively titled organization “Set” (“Network”) and were planning to use bombs to “destabilize the political climate in the country” during the presidential elections and the FIFA World Cup. They alleged that the network’s cells were operating in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Penza, and Belarus.
\n\nFSB officers planted weapons and explosives in the vehicles of some arrestees and tortured them in the pre-trial detention center, beating them, hanging them upside down, connecting electrodes to their bodies with which they electrocuted them, and threatening them with even worse. Using these methods, the officers forced the arrestees to agree to validate forged testimony professing that they are part of the alleged terrorist “Network.” At the end of January 2018, two more antifascists were arrested in St. Petersburg. They were also beaten, tortured by means of electrical shock, and forced to agree that they too were members of the invented “Network.”
\n\nAs of now, seven anti-fascists are behind bars and another is under house arrest, facing up to a decade in prison.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/10.jpg\")
Solidarity demonstration in Berlin on March 18 coinciding with the Russian presidential elections.
\nAfter news spread about the arrests and torture, activists organized solidarity actions in Russia and elsewhere around the world. The Russian state responded with additional crackdowns. In Moscow, officials detained participants in solidarity actions and pressed criminal charges against them. Anti-fascists from Chelyabinsk were detained, tortured with electric shocks, and now face charges as well.
\n\nOn March 21, the FSB admitted to inflicting electrical shocks on at least one of the arrestees. Members of the public supervisory commission of St. Petersburg had visited defendant Viktor Filinkov a few days his arrest and recorded dozens of marks from electrical torture on his body. The FSB acknowledges that officers inflicted these injuries on Filinkov via electrical shock attacks, but maintain that this was necessary “to prevent him from escaping.”
\n\nThe appendix, below, includes a chronological list of the arrestees, including excerpts from their accounts and accounts from lawyers.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/3.jpg\")
Arrestee Victor Filinkov.
\nOne of the first contemporary attempts to fabricate a far-reaching criminal conspiracy in order to frame anarchists took place in Italy in the mid-1990s, in what became known as the Marini trial. As one of the birthplaces of the original anarchist movement, Italy has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to strategies of repression. It’s worth quoting at length from the analysis of the Marini trial that anarchists published at the time, as it offered an ominous portent of everything that has followed in the years since:
\n\n\n\n\n“With the so-called Marini trial, they have taken a more sophisticated approach. They have invented a fictional criminal anarchist organization with two tiers: the larger aboveground tier consisting of publications, presses, occupied centers and so on; and the clandestine portion, the armed gang. Using this fictional construction, state prosecutor Antonio Marini charged dozens of anarchists with “subversive association” and “armed gang” (and a few with crimes related to actual events). The only evidence for the “subversive association” and “armed gang” charges are the letters, periodicals, e-mails, conversations, and visits among those charged.
\n\n“Because these charges (particularly that of “subversive association”) are, in fact, not very defined, they give the state a sword to go on holding over anarchists’ heads. If one trial fails, new investigations can be opened, and the Italian authorities keep on opening investigations involving raids, searches, bugging, harassment—all the usual police tactics. Even if the number of convictions that these charges succeed in bringing about is low, this process can easily lead comrades to focusing their energy on self-defense rather than attack against the social order. When this occurs, the strategy of the state has been successful.”
\n
In 2008 and 2009, police carried out raids with the intention of establishing the existence of nationwide anarchist terror networks in France (the “Tarnac 9” case) and the United States. Neither of these efforts ultimately succeeded.
\n\nIn an article we published in 2010, “The Age of Conspiracy Charges,” we reviewed over a dozen high-profile political conspiracy cases initiated in the US between 2004 and 2010 targeting anarchists and their associates. Several of these efforts sent people to prison for years or decades, but none of them succeeded in demonstrating any evidence of worldwide or nationwide terror networks.
\n\nAfter the high-water mark of popular struggles in 2011, police around Europe counterattacked with another wave of attempts to invent anarchist terror networks. In late 2014 and early 2015, police in Spain and Catalunya carried out Operations Pandora and Piñata, arresting dozens of anarchists and charging many of them with being part of a terrorist group—on the basis of evidence such as their having co-published a book entitled Against Democracy. By the beginning of 2018, this attempt, too, had proved to be a dismal failure. An important factor in the defeat of this wave of repression was the broad support the defendants received throughout the Iberian peninsula, including a solidarity campaign on the theme #YoTambienSoyAnarquista (“I too am an anarchist”).
\n\nPolice in Czech Republic imitated the Spanish example, initiating their own Operation Fenix in April 2015. This also did not turn out well for the authorities, with the trial ending with all defendants acquitted and the state scrambling to invent new justifications to continue harassing its targets. Thanks to strenuous solidarity efforts and the laziness, incompetence, and stupidity of the police, the authorities failed to convince even their own reactionary legal officials that these fake terror networks existed.
\n\nFor more background on repression throughout Europe during this period, read “On Repression Patterns in Europe,” which offers a critical overview of repression and solidarity in six countries.
\n\nSeeking to improve on all these failures, in 2017, the Russian security services introduced an innovation: using horrific methods of torture, they set out to terrorize arrestees into signing statements proclaiming their guilt themselves. Thus far, they have succeeded in forcing a half dozen people to acknowledge membership in a far-fetched “terror network” that had not actually carried out any actions.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/1.jpg\")
Arrestee Igor Shishkin.
\nThe police of all nations are interlinked in a global network. They exchange tactics, strategies, and training; innovations in one field or region are swiftly passed on to others. It is plain for all to see that governments and the models of policing that they employ have become increasingly authoritarian since the turn of the century. In this context, it’s no stretch to imagine that police in Europe and the US might emulate the Russian model for concocting a conspiracy and forcing their targets to confirm its existence by means of torture.
\n\nDoes this really seem hard to imagine?
\n\nThe authorities in Europe and the US are certainly not above fabricating excuses to press charges. As we outlined in Bounty Hunters and Child Predators, the police are often too lazy to target actual anarchist organizing. Bringing the negligence of all cynical employees to their work, they frequently find it easier to entrap inexperienced individuals who are peripheral to anarchist movements. In the US, this is adequately illustrated by the entrapments of Eric McDavid, David McKay, Bradley Crowder, Matthew DePalma, the NATO 3, and the Cleveland 4, to name just a few examples, by FBI agents provocateurs like Andrew Darst and Brandon Darby. None of these people would have engaged in illegal activity had it not been for pressure and, in some cases, outright seduction from FBI operatives. All of them served years in prison as a result. Eric McDavid’s conviction was overturned nine years into his 19.5-year sentence when it came out that the FBI had concealed evidence that exonerated him; but in all of these cases, the authorities used roughly the same approach.
\n\nIt is well documented that the US has employed torture against US and European citizens, including tactics such as beatings, forced anal penetration, forced drug injections, denial of food and water, exposure to extreme cold, and threats of imminent death. A report by the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General acknowledged that after 9/11, detainees were slammed face first into a wall against a shirt with an American flag; the bloodstain left behind was described by one officer as the print of bloody noses and a mouth. US military interrogators have committed suicide as a consequence of their role in torturing detainees.
\n\nThere are also reports of US government interrogators using electrical shocks and mock executions being used to force them to sign forged “confessions.” This is the FSB model.
\n\nNor is it unrealistic to imagine that police in Europe or the United States would use torture against anarchists. Italian police tortured arrestees during the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, as the European Court of Human Rights recently acknowledged. There were reports of police torturing arrestees during protests against the 2003 Ministerial planning the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami. Since then, various city governments have paid out countless millions of dollars as a consequence of police misconduct; it takes a long time to get external confirmation of torture, but over the coming years, we will surely see many more cases from the past fifteen years come to light.
\n\nThe current US administration is outright eager to see torture employed more widely. Just as the agenda of the Trump administration has been a driving force in unprecedented new crackdowns such as the J20 prosecutions, it is realistic to expect that the enthusiasm Trump and his cronies have shown for Russian “toughness” will be reflected in the activities of police and federal agents in the years to come.
\n\nBy the time the authorities get around to trying out new strategies on anarchists, we can be sure they will already have employed them against Muslims and poor people of color. This is yet another reason for us to engage in solidarity organizing with communities more targeted than our own, so we can keep abreast of police tactics that are likely to be employed against us next.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/5.jpg\")
Wounds inflicted on arrestee Ilya Kapustin from handcuffs.
\nThe tactic of forcing defendants to validate false testimony is not new to Russia, as a cursory review of the history of the USSR will show. Likewise, this is not the first time that the Russian security services have attempted to frame anarchists and anti-fascists by means of a concocted terror conspiracy.
\n\nFor example, during the year before the presidential elections of 2012, the Nizhny Novgorod Counter-Extremism department concocted the so-called Antifa-RASH case, in which they accused several anti-fascists of laying the groundwork for an armed coup; they even fabricated blatantly false “membership cards,” which were riddled with errors. Three of the defendants were eventually amnestied, but two remain in exile to this day.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/8.jpg\")
Obviously fake “membership card” fabricated by the Nizhny Novgorod Counter-Extremism department to entrap anti-fascists in 2011.
\nAfter the parliamentary elections at the end of 2011, massive protests broke out in Russia and continued through the presidential elections. Apparently, this popular reaction struck fear into the Russian government. When Putin returned to power, new repressive legislation was introduced in order to systematically suppress all protest movements and criticism of the government.
\n\nUntil 2014, the authorities had cooperated with far-right nationalists. But after the Maidan uprising in the Ukraine, they cracked down on nationalists and fascists as well. And after the annexation of Crimea, the authorities brought more and more criminal cases against so-called terrorists and extremists: against Moslem people from “non-traditional” denominations, against Crimean Tatars, against nationalists, anarchists, and anti-fascists. For example, in the case of Sentsov and Kolchenko, an anarchist was sentenced to ten years imprisonment alongside an accused member of the Ukrainian fascist party Right Sector—despite his only connection to nationalists being that he had been beaten by them.
\n\nFor some years, the nationalist Vyacheslav Maltsev promoted the idea that there would be a revolution on November 5, 2017. Maltsev himself left Russia due to a criminal charge against him (“Public calls for extremist activity”). Starting in October 2017, the authorities arrested many people connected to Maltsev and his movement throughout Russia and accused them of preparing terrorist attacks.
\n\nThis is how it came to pass that, in the city of Penza, antifascists who had an airsoft team called “5.11”1 were arrested, tortured, and accused of terrorism. When the secret service understood that the arrestees had nothing to do with nationalist revolution, they fabricated a conspiracy charge: participation in an invented anarchist terrorist group, “Network.” Thus the FSB sought to smash both right-wing and left-wing movements at the same time.
\n\nAll this took place in advance of a new round of presidential “elections” on March 18. Putin and his colleagues wanted these elections to occur without protests afterwards. That’s why they set out to intimidate everyone who could potentially bring people into the streets.
\n\nMeanwhile, Russia is preparing to host the FIFA World Cup. As we documented in reference to the World Cup in Brazil, mega-projects like the World Cup offer oppressive state governments the opportunity to carry out massive new initiatives of restructuring and repression. The Russian Secret Services were determined to show that they could effectively prevent terror attacks—and the easiest way to do so was to invent a threat. This is another factor that explains the new wave of repression against anarchists and antifascists in Russia.
\n\nThe fact that the state intensified its attacks against anarchists and anti-fascists after finally cracking down on far-right groups should serve as a reminder that anti-fascists should be careful, in the course of their organizing, not to legitimize any form of state repression, even against the most dangerous fascists. Whatever the state does to fascists today, it will surely do to anarchists and other rebels tomorrow.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/9.svg\")
A map of the Russian election results: the dictator Putin was unanimously reelected. Democracy works in not-so-mysterious ways.
\nWhat can we do to support the Russian defendants and thwart the attempt to innovate a new model for repression?
\n\nAt the very least, we have to direct attention to the Russian torture cases in order to discredit the Russian police, in hopes of discouraging the security services of other nations from following their example. This much should be possible. Only a few years ago, Pussy Riot became darlings of the liberal media, filling the time-honored role of “Russian dissidents.” At a time when Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia dominates the news, it should be possible for us to use the same channels that publicized the J20 cases to draw attention to these cases too.
\n\nIn responding to fabricated conspiracy cases, we can draw on our previously mentioned text, The Age of Conspiracy Charges:
\n\n\n\n\n1. Don’t let the state intimidate us out of confrontational public organizing.
\n\nThe state targets public organizers because they are effective. Even when it is framed as a strategic choice, retreating from public organizing can only play into the hands of the authorities. Repression is intended to cause militants to back away from engaging with the public, losing connection with a broader social base and deepening the false dichotomy between passive “community organizing” and clandestine direct action. This is not to say everyone must organize publicly—on the contrary, one function of public organizing is to prepare a favorable ground for more generalized and anonymous actions—but that it is a necessary aspect of anarchist struggle.
\n\n2. Minimize our vulnerability to conspiracy charges.
\n\nThere are many ways we can do this. Perhaps the most obvious is to practice appropriate security culture, sharing sensitive information on a need-to-know basis and doing our best to keep informants out of our circles. Security culture is not only for those who may be party to illegal activity; it is important for everyone connected to networks that the state is interested in mapping or disrupting.
\n\nLikewise, it’s important to keep an eye out for federal bounty hunters preying on naïve young activists. Often they prefer to target the least experienced or connected individuals in a social milieu instead of tangling with longtime militants. We can also inoculate ourselves against disruption by sorting out internal conflicts before they offer infiltrators or prosecutors opportunities to divide us against each other.
\n\nWhenever someone is targeted with a politically motivated conspiracy case, it’s important that we mobilize the very best legal defense we can. Every conspiracy case against radicals sets a precedent for more of the same; defending one of us is literally defending all of us. Good lawyers serve two functions. First, they intimidate the state, which will be more likely to bargain or drop charges if it knows pressing them will be expensive and risky. Second, they can win cases or get them thrown out. Raising the money to defend one person effectively can save a lot more money and heartache in the long run.
\n\nPublic support campaigns are equally important. On one side, this means going public when you are targeted—both so you can receive support and so that repression will be brought into the spotlight. On the other, it means organizing long-term support for defendants, so they will feel invested in answering to the community and so the authorities will have to factor in public relations challenges when they consider whether to target us. Support campaigns can target the most vulnerable individuals in the power structure; the supporters of the RNC 8 did this by concentrating on county attorney Susan Gaertner, who was eventually forced to drop the terrorism charges against the defendants.
\n\nFinally, though this should go without saying, we can protect ourselves from conspiracy charges simply by not cooperating with the authorities. Many of these cases would never have gotten off the ground if people had not been intimidated into making statements against their former comrades. Nobody talks, everybody walks—that goes for our whole community as well as specific groups of defendants.
\n\nDefendants who cooperate with the government never come out ahead. As detailed below and elsewhere, not only do they lose friends and community support, they rarely get significantly shorter sentences—and doing prison time is much harder as an informant.
\n\n3. Craft an effective narrative discrediting the state’s use of conspiracy charges and circulate it to the general public.
\n\nIf the authorities come to rely on pressing conspiracy charges against anarchists as a central strategy of repression, we must take advantage of the ways this makes them vulnerable. Many in our society—and not just radicals—are uncomfortable with the idea of people being persecuted for thought crime. We need to find ways to address people outside our social and political circles about the prevalence of conspiracy charges, so as to utilize this opportunity to discredit the state and delegitimize conspiracy-based cases. The broader the range of people who disapprove of this tactic, the more the hands of the authorities will be tied.\nMost of this work has yet to be done. If you are concerned about government repression, consider the ways you can approach others outside radical communities about this issue.
\n\nWhen we talk about conspiracy charges and witch hunts, it’s important to emphasize that we’re talking about the state, which exists to carry out violent repression. As long as there are inequalities and injustices, there will be resistance, and those in power will attempt to repress it. If we take ourselves seriously as a revolutionary movement, we need to see ourselves in the larger context and histories of resistance movements and the repression they have faced; we would do well to learn both from the successes and the failures of the past. It’s also important to remember that repression is a daily fact of life for countless people in communities on the wrong end of power and privilege; anarchists are far from exceptional in this regard.
\n
Obviously, it is much more difficult for people to resist the pressure to cooperate with the authorities—and even to agree to validate outright lies—when they are grievously tortured. This makes solidarity and publicity efforts all the more important in this context.
\n\n To donate money to support the legal defense of the arrestees, you can use Paypal to send funds to the Moscow Anarchist Black Cross at abc-msk@riseup.net. Add a note that the funds are for “St. Petersburg and Penza.” Send euros or US dollars.
\n\nHere are some other ways to donate:
\n\nYandex (wallet of the Anarchist Black Cross St. Petersburg) : 41001160378989
Bitcoin : 1EKGZT2iMjNKHz8oVt7svXpUdcPAXkRBAH
Litecoin : LNZK1uyER7Kz9nmiL6mbm9AzDM5Z6CNxVu
Etherium : 0x1deb54058a69fcc443db2bf9562df61f974b16f7
Monero : 4BrL51JCc9NGQ71kWhnYoDRffsDZy7m1HUU7MRU4nUMXAHNFBEJhkTZV9HdaL4gfuNBxLPc3BeMkLGaPbF5vWtANQn4wNWChXhQ8vao8MA
Zcash : t1dX9Rpupi77erqEbdef3T353pvfTp9SAt1
If you need another option for transferring money, contact the Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow: abc-msk@riseup.net
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/03/26/2.jpg\")
Arrestee Victor Filinkov.
\nEgor Zorin — Arrested October 17-18. He was the first arrestee, and the first to make a confession. Currently under house arrest.
\n\nIlya Shakursky — Arrested October 19. Shakursky was trying to find Zorin, after Zorin disappeared. He was arrested after exiting a bus on his way home. Law enforcement planted two grenades and a pistol under the back seat of Shakursky’s car. Tortured with electricity in the basement of the pre-trial detention center, he eventually agreed to a “confession.” His mother was fired from her job after the news was published about the case and torture. He wrote a formal complaint about torture. Currently in pre-trial detention.
\n\n\n\n\nHe said the plan was to implicate them in the Maltsev case. He said this. I was surprised. What was the connection? In my view, this case was fabricated on formal grounds. They grabbed one comrade by the name of Zorin. He was the weakest of them and testified against all his friends. Moreover, his testimony is absolutely far-fetched. It was grounds for detaining the other guys on suspicion of having committed the particular crime.
\n\nThis is where it gets interesting. According to my client, all of them were tortured in the basement of the remand prison. The torture was sophisticated. Officers in masks and camouflage uniforms would enter their cells. They took them to a room in the basement, forced them to strip, attached electrodes to their fingertips, and cranked up a so-called dynamo.
\n\nHe just said, “I couldn’t take it. I broke down.”
\n\n \n
Vasily Kuksov — Arrested October 19. When officers brought him along to search his home, his trousers and jacket were torn and bloodstained and his forehead and nose were badly injured, as if he had been smashed against the pavement. There is speculation that he was tied to a car and dragged behind it. Guns were planted in his car (the lock of which is broken). He still has not agreed to offer or validate any testimony to the police. Currently in pre-trial detention.
\n\nDmitry Pchelintsev — Arrested October 27. Pchelintsev had left the house at approximately six o’clock in the morning to meet his grandmother when he was arrested and brutally tortured. Accused of being an organizer of the supposed terrorist “Network,” he validated the narrative of the FSB. He made a formal complaint about torture, but asked to rescind it after a few days—a likely sign that he was tortured again. Currently in pre-trial detention.
\n\n\n\n\n“After I tried to commit suicide by slashing my veins open, I was put under special watch in the remand prison. The cuffs were not removed from my hands even when I was signing interrogation reports.
\n\nI want to add that, when I was tortured with electrical shocks, my mouth was full of “crushed teeth” due to the fact I gritted my teeth since the pain was strong, and I tore the frenulum of my tongue. My mouth was full of blood, and at some point one of my torturers stuck my sock in my mouth.
\n\nI was beaten so badly I had open wounds on my head.
\n\n—Transcript of attorney Oleg Zaitsev’s interview with Dmitry Pchelintsev
\n
Andrey Chernov — Arrested at the beginning of November. In jail, Chernov met Pchelintsev, who told him to agree to everything in order to minimize the extent to which he would be tortured. Subsequently, he proclaimed his guilt. Currently in pre-trial detention.
\n\nArman Sagynbayev — Arrested at the beginning of November in St. Petersburg. Sagynbayev is reportedly experiencing serious health problems and needs medical attention. During the police custody extension hearing in mid-December, he said he constantly felt sick and vomited. According to other detainees, Sagynbayev was brutally tortured. Currently in pre-trial detention.
\n\nViktor Filinkov — Kidnapped in an airport by the FSB on January 23. Filinkov is an anti-fascist, a computer programmer, and a Kazakh citizen. Officers took Filinkov to the woods, where they tortured him with electrical shock. He made a formal complaint about torture. He initially cooperated with the FSB, proclaiming his guilt, but now he wishes to retract his testimony. Currently in pre-trial detention.
\n\n\n\n\nFor some questions they didn’t have the answers themselves.
\n\n“Where are the weapons?”
\n\n“What weapons? I know nothing,” I replied, and was shocked.
\n\n“You know everything, where are the weapons?” Bondarev K.A. pressed.
\n\n“Tell me, I will say what you tell me!” I hoped for mercy, but was still shocked. After several rounds, these questions were changed for ones which there were answers.
\n\nThe masked man shocked me in different places: handcuffs, neck, chest, crotch, but the most convenient place was the right leg—he pressed me against the window, fixed my body in place, pressed the Taser in, pushed the button and held it like that, and I couldn’t move my leg anywhere. Bondarev K.A. repeated punches on the back of my head from time to time—all in all, he hit me at least 10 times.
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Igor Shishkin — Kidnapped when he left to walk his dog on January 25. Shishkin was missing for two days, then reappeared at a court appearance which no one was permitted to attend. He had many marks on his body from torture and from electric wires. He made a deal with investigators. In pre-trial detention.
\n\nThe Public Monitoring Commission in St. Petersburg visited Filinkov and Shishkin in prison and confirmed that they had marks from several kinds of torture.
\n\nIlya Kapustin — A witness. Kapustin was seized by masked secret service officers on the evening of January 25 on his way home. He reports that he was tortured with an electric cattle prod while being asked questions. He is free.
\n\n\n\n\nWhen I was returning home in the evening and was quite close to my house, five or so men in black uniforms and masks attacked me from different directions. They pushed me on the ground and dragged me into a minivan while kicking me. I tried to call for help. I yelled, but to no avail. I was knocked down on the floor of the vehicle, and the men searched me while continuing to kick me. I was handcuffed very tightly, so tightly I still have cuts on my hands.
\n\nThe vehicle drove off, and I was interrogated. When I did not know the answer to a question, when I did not understand who or what they were talking about, they shocked me with an electric cattle prod near my groin or the side of my stomach. They shocked me so I would say some acquaintance of mine or another was planning to do something dangerous. There were questions about whether I was a member of certain organizations, where I had traveled, and whether I had been to Penza. They asked me to tell them details about the lives of my acquaintances.
\n\nSo, from time to time they poked me with the shocker. At some point, one of them said they could dump me in the woods somewhere and break my legs. I was looking forward to this moment when it would all be over, because they had tortured me for such a long time it was quite unbearable.
\n\nI was in the vehicle from roughly nine-thirty in the evening to one-thirty in the morning when we arrived, apparently at an FSB office. When they took me out, they pulled a hood over my head and forced me to look down, and I could not figure out where we were, but later, when they took me home to search my flat, I guessed that I had been in the FSB office on the corner on Shpalernaya Street. I saw many secret service people in the office, only they were dressed in plain clothes. An investigator questioned me for something like an hour. Other secret service guys would sometimes stop by. One of them told me that if I did not want a second round, I should answer all the questions.
\n\nThen we went to the flat where we live, and there they let us read a search warrant issued by a court in Penza. During the search, I refused to switch on my laptop and telephone. That made them act very stridently. They threatened to hide a grenade and come back in a couple of days and find it in a search. Ultimately, they confiscated my laptop, telephone, and hard drive.
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In addition, activists who carried out solidarity actions in Chelyabinsk were arrested and tortured by officers of the FSB.
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5.11 is the name of a sports clothing company. It is also the date of the shooting of anarchists in the Arbekovo forest of Penza at the beginning of the 20th century. ↩
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