Families of Penza-Petersburg “Terrorists” Form Committee

“Antifascism is not a crime.” Photo courtesy of Movement For Human Rights

Relatives of Defendants in Penza-Petersburg “Terrorism” Case Form Parents Network
Mediazona
April 9, 2018

The website of the Movement For Human Rights (MFHR) reports parents of the arrestees in the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case have come together to form The Parents Network: A Committee for Relatives of Arrested Anarchists.

The human rights activists report that a meeting of relatives of the young men accused in the case took place in Moscow on April 7. The loved ones of almost all the defendants in the case came to MFHR’s offices, while two relatives participated in the meeting via Skype.

The arrested men’s loved ones talked about the pressure put on their children and husbands, and the illegal actions of law enforcement officials. At the end of the meeting, the relatives decided to form an organization whose goal would be to mutually support each other as well as interact with the authorities and human rights organizations. MHFR’s website list contact information for the committee’s officers.

In October 2017, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers detained four antifascists in Penza: Yegor Zorin, Ilya Shakursky, Vasily Kuksov, and Dmitry Pchelintsev. In early November 2017, Andrei Chernov was detained in Penza, while Arman Sagynbayev was detained in Petersburg. In January 2018, Igor Shishkin and Viktor Filinkov were detained in Petersburg.

All eight men have been accused of involvement in a “terrorist community,” a crime under Article 205.4 Part 2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. The FSB claims the antifascists were members of a terrorist organization, code-named The Network, whose members planned to set off bombs during the March 2018 Russian presidential election and the FIFA World Cup, schedule for this summer in Russia, and thus “sway the popular masses to further destabilize the political circumstances in the country” and spark an armed insurrection.

Several of the defendants, including Pchelintsev, Shakursky, and Filinkov, as well as Ilya Kapustin, a witness detained in Petersburg, said FSB officers tortured them to make them to confess. Members of the Petersburg Public Monitoring Commission certified they found signs of beating and traces of taser burns on Filinkov’s and Shiskin’s bodies. It later transpired that Kapustin left Russia, and Pchelintsev withdrew his testimony after he was beaten in the Penza Remand Prison.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Please read my earlier posts on the Penza-Petersburg  case and two other current cases that also seem to be FSB frame-ups. Also check out the first major international press coverage of the case in Newsweek.

• “Families of Penza-Petersburg Terrorists Form Committee,” 9 April 2018
• “Extremism Inside Out,” 30 March 2018
• “Search and Intimidate,” 29 March 2018
• “Solidarity (The Case of the Penza and Petersburg Antifascists),” 24 March 2018
• “Anna Tereshkina: At Viktor Filinkov’s Remand Extension Hearing,” 23 March 2018
• “Ping, Ping, Ping: The Remand Extension Hearing of the Penza ‘Terrorists,’” 20 March 2018
• “Tortured Petersburg Antifascist Viktor Filinkov Transferred to Remand Prison in Leningrad Region,” 17 March 2018
• “Svyatoslav Rechkalov: ‘They Proceeded to Pull Down My Trousers, Threatening to Shock Me in the Groin,’” 15 March 2018
• “They Jump on Anything That Moves, Part 3: The Case of the New Greatness Movement,” 15 March 2018
• “The Horrorshow Continues: Svyatoslav Rechkalov Tortured in Moscow,” 15 March 2018
• “The Rowdies Have to Be Apprehended Legally, So We Can Have a Celebration in the City on March 18, not Bedlam,” 15 March 2018
• “Ilya Kapustin: ‘When the Stamp Thudded in My Passport, It Was Like a Huge Weight Had Been Lifted from My Shoulders,’” 13 March 2018
• “Your Husband Safely Made the Flight to Minsk after We Abducted Him in Petersburg,” 2 March 2018
• “‘FSB Officers Always Get Their Way!’” 28 February 2018
• ‘The Case of the Anarchists: Disappearances, Torture, Frame-Up (11 AM, February 15, 2018, Moscow),” 14 February 2018
• “The Strange Investigation of a Strange Subway Attack,” 12 February 2018
• “Arrested Penza Antifascists Talk about Torture in Remand Prison,” 10 February 2018
• “Solidarity with Persecuted Russian Antifascists and Anarchists in NYC and Minneapolis,” 7 February 2018
• “Ilya Kapustin: ‘They Said They Could Break My Legs and Dump Me in the Woods,’” 31 January 2018
• “The Penza ‘Terrorism’ Case,” 30 January 2018
• “Breaking Bad with the FSB,” 29 January 2018
• “How ‘Stability’ Has Really Been Achieved in Russia,” 29 January 2018