Twenty years for the Amazons. Why women are not given a life sentence?
In Rostov-on-Don 5 December 2017 was sentenced in the sensational case of a terrible gang of "Amazons" (as it was christened with a light pen of Russian journalists). The peculiarity of this gang is that the majority of its members were women. Inessa Tarverdiyeva, Victoria Tarverdiyeva, Anastasia Sinelnik and the only man defendant Sergey Sinelnik (another member of the gang Roman Podkopayev was killed during the arrest) were found guilty of committing a number of crimes. Banditry, murder, attempted murder, robbery, theft, trafficking weapons - here is a list of gang atrocities. But behind the dry lines of the court records and the titles of the articles, there is blood and tears, human lives and destroys destroyed.
The Amazon trial went on for two years, and before that another two years went by. One of the most brutal gangs in modern Russian stories acted one and a half decades. It was only possible to neutralize it in the 2013 year - and this is purely by chance. 8 September 2013 of the year. Aksay. A small town - a satellite of Rostov-on-Don. The gangsters who killed the owners of the house — a man and a woman — entered the territory of a private household, after which they took from the house what they found — three bottles of champagne and a package of chicken fillets. So cheap they valued the lives of two people.
Having enjoyed the simple booty, the criminals hurried to escape. They moved on the car "Gazelle" - and on it we stopped at a forest belt near the residential areas of Aksay. Here, a suspicious "Gazelle" and noticed a passing car private security, in which there were police Ivan Shakhova and Alexei Lagoda. Police officers demanded strangers to show documents, but the criminals opened fire to kill. Ivan Shakhova was killed on the spot, and Aleksey Lagoda, who was injured, was nevertheless able to shoot one of the criminals (as it turned out later, Roman Podkopayev, the leader and organizer of the gang, was) and injure the former woman. Soon reinforcements arrived. Police detained a wounded criminal and found a tent camp in a forest belt. There was another woman and a minor girl in the camp. Very quickly, the police found and the alleged accomplices of the gang - spouses Sinelnik, who lived in Aksay district. There was no limit to the surprise of the operatives when they learned that Sergey Sinelnik was their colleague, the inspector of the traffic police of the Aksai district of the Rostov region. Sergey and his wife Anastasia were detained. Thus began the exposure of the gang, which terrified the southern Russian regions.
The list of crimes committed by the gang of Amazons is impressive. On the territory of the Rostov region, the gang was operating from 2008 to 2013 years. During these five years, a whole series of murders and robberies were committed. The victims of many of them were law enforcement officers, but casual victims were also killed. Already at the trial, Inessa Tarverdiyeva said that “out of hatred” policemen were killed.
7 February 2008 of the year. Aksay, Rostov region - killed Colonel of Police Mikhail Zlydnev, head of the information security department of the regional State Drug Control Agency, and his wife. They were shot in their own household, carrying out of the house two jackets and a TV tuner.
17 July 2008 of the year. Aksaysky district of the Rostov region - a car was shot on the federal highway. The Rostov citizen Alexey Sazonov who was in it was killed, and his companion Julia Vasilyeva was seriously injured - one of the few victims of the Amazons who were lucky to survive. During this attack, the gangsters took away only the women's handbag and purse.
10 March 2009 of the year. Novocherkassk, Rostov Region - the criminals broke into a residential building and shot Saiga from a carbine, then finished off with knives, two people. The booty this time was a laptop, camera, video camera, boots, sheepskin coat and jacket.
November 29 2012 of the year. Novocherkassk, Rostov region. Killed Vadim Lozhkov - the owner of the household, which tried to rob the "Amazons".
16 March 2013 of the year. Aksay, Rostov region. Nikolai Kutsekon was killed - a traffic police officer whose homeowners the criminals also tried to rob.
24 April 2013, Aksai district of the Rostov region. Andrei Yurin was killed - also a traffic police officer. Miraculously managed to save his wife and children, who closed in the house.
In 2012-2013 gangsters launched a series of attacks on police officers and private security guards. So, 9 September 2012, in Novocherkassk, the crew of the private security arrived at the alarm system in the dental clinic. Suddenly, criminals attacked the police. Both officers of the PSB were killed, a machine gun and two pistols were taken from them. 8 On April 2013, in Novocherkassk, under similar circumstances, the crew of a private security company was fired upon, having arrived at a call to a grocery store. One of the Chopovs died, the other was seriously injured.
It is not known how long the bloody orgy of the “Amazons” gang would have continued if it had not been for the exploits of the police - Ivan Shakhov and Alexei Lagoda, who then stopped suspicious people near the Gazelle. The bloody trail of the gang impressed even seasoned investigators. It turned out that Roman Podkopayev and his cohabitant Inessa Tarverdiyeva began their criminal way of being shot while they were detained back in the distant 1990s. Podkopaev and Tarverdiyeva lived in the village of Divnoye, Stavropol Territory. Roman committed the first murder even when he was a student at the Stavropol Medical Academy, where he studied as a dentist - he slaughtered his teacher from mercenary motives. The next victim was the husband of Inessa Tarverdiyeva Arzu, from whom Roman took Inessa. Podkopaev committed several more murders in Darny before the gang switched to the Rostov region. The villagers were told that they were leaving for shabashki, while they themselves went to rob and kill.
Gradually, Victoria’s daughter Tarverdiyeva and Anastasia Podkopayeva’s sister, who was married to Aksai traffic police officer Sergei Sinelnik, were drafted into criminal activity. Using his official position, a police officer could very well help a criminal gang, covering it from colleagues and timely transmitting information about the actions of law enforcement officers.
More than thirty people were killed by criminals over the many years of the gang’s existence. But perhaps the most high-profile crime in which the Amazons were accused was the murder of the Chudakovs family. This is a very scary and complicated story, the true circumstances of which are still unknown to the public.
8 June 2009 of the year on the federal highway M-4 "Don", near the village of Rassvet of Aksai district of the Rostov region, was attacked a car in which husband Dmitry Chudakov, wife Irina and two children, 11-year-old Veronika returned from rest in a sanatorium and 7-year-old Sasha. The head of the family, Dmitry Chudakov, served in the rank of lieutenant colonel as a commander of the SOBR unit in the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Nizhny Novgorod Region. The whole family of eccentric was brutally murdered. What only versions did not arise in the investigation - at first they accused the akshayanin Alexei Serenko, who spent two years in the remand prison. Then they tried to hang the Kudakovs on the notorious Tsapkov from Kuschevka, and finally they officially accused the gang of “Amazons”, although this accusation caused criticism from many people watching the process, including the mother of the murdered lieutenant colonel Valentina Chudakova. She is convinced that the real killers of his son are not the Amazons. But we will not go into the discussion of this issue, especially since in the media for the eight years that have passed since the tragedy, a large amount of material has been published.
Roman Podkopaev was killed during the arrest. Thus, the main accomplices, Inessa and Victoria Tarverdiyev, and the married couple Sinelnik, who were actively helping the criminals, were to answer for the murders committed by the gang. But the sentence imposed by 5 December surprised the public. Inessa Tarverdiyeva, who, along with the deceased Roman Podkopayev, played a key role in the gang, was sentenced to 21 year of imprisonment. Victoria Tarverdiyeva received 16 years imprisonment. Anastasia Sinelnik received 19 years of imprisonment, and Sergey Sinelnik received 20 years of imprisonment. Inessa Tarverdiyeva herself stressed that she did not intend to appeal the sentence. Only Sergey Sinelnik will file an appeal, as he found the sentence too harsh.
The society assessed the sentence imposed on Inessa Tarverdiyeva as very mild - 21 had a year of imprisonment for participating in numerous murders, moreover, Inessa carried out a number of murders personally, the victims included women and children. Now the criminal law has significantly tightened, for example, in the direction of punishment of "narcotic" crimes. Twenty years in prison can be obtained for the drug trade, but here we are still talking about dozens of murders, not to mention other crimes.
But Russian legislation is liberal in relation to women - defendants - a woman cannot be sentenced to life imprisonment, no matter how many murders she commits. In addition, there are no women's strict-security colonies, so the Tarverdiyevs and Anastasia Sinelnik will serve their sentences in the general-regime colonies. At the same time, Sergei Sinelnik, who was not personally involved in the killings and attacks, received 20 years of imprisonment in a high security colony. Is it fair to say that men and women who are equal, according to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, bear different punishments for the acts they commit? Even for a small part of the bloody crimes committed by Inessa Tarverdiyeva, men would be sentenced to life imprisonment, in Soviet times - to the death penalty of execution.
The humane treatment of women who commit bloody crimes was inherited from the Soviet justice system. The use of capital punishment for women in the USSR was the absolute exception. In the entire history of Soviet justice, only a few death sentences were imposed on women. For example, 11 in August 1979 was shot by the court of Antonin Makarova - the infamous “Tonka-machine gunner”, who served as an executioner among the Nazis and personally shot at least one and a half thousand (!) Soviet citizens. In 1987, Tamara Ivanyutin was shot - a serial killer-poisoner, along with her accomplices, poisoned 13 people to death, and 9 poisoned personally Ivanyutin.
The third woman shot in the USSR was Berta Borodkina - perhaps the only one from the trio who did not deserve the death sentence. Burt Borodkin was shot in August 1983 of the year for systematic embezzlement of socialist property on a particularly large scale, which she committed as the head of the trust of restaurants and canteens in Gelendzhik. There were several other death sentences for women, but for all these sentences, the sentence was changed.
It should be noted that in a number of countries in the world women have no advantage over men in the area of the appointment or non-appointment of any punishment. For example, in Ukraine, women are sentenced to life imprisonment. In Kharkiv, there is the only Kachanovsky colony in the country where women sentenced to life are kept. The living conditions of their maintenance is much milder than that of men - “for life”. Women can be sentenced to life imprisonment in the UK, USA, EU countries, not to mention most countries in Asia and Africa. Equally, there are no differences regarding the sentence of death in countries where this punishment still exists. As a rule, only pregnant women are not sentenced to death.
However, a strange situation has developed in Russia when a woman is “more equal” than a man. A criminal responsible for the death of several, or even a few dozen people, receives a period comparable to that which a man can be assigned for one or two murders. This situation contradicts both the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Many public figures, politicians, and lawyers repeatedly say and write about the fact that men and women with regard to the imposition of punishment must be equalized in rights. But the situation remains unchanged. We see her injustice even by the example of the sentence to the Amazons - the immediate killer (woman) received 21 a year of imprisonment, the accomplice (man) - 20 years of imprisonment in a strict regime colony.
The Amazon trial went on for two years, and before that another two years went by. One of the most brutal gangs in modern Russian stories acted one and a half decades. It was only possible to neutralize it in the 2013 year - and this is purely by chance. 8 September 2013 of the year. Aksay. A small town - a satellite of Rostov-on-Don. The gangsters who killed the owners of the house — a man and a woman — entered the territory of a private household, after which they took from the house what they found — three bottles of champagne and a package of chicken fillets. So cheap they valued the lives of two people.
Having enjoyed the simple booty, the criminals hurried to escape. They moved on the car "Gazelle" - and on it we stopped at a forest belt near the residential areas of Aksay. Here, a suspicious "Gazelle" and noticed a passing car private security, in which there were police Ivan Shakhova and Alexei Lagoda. Police officers demanded strangers to show documents, but the criminals opened fire to kill. Ivan Shakhova was killed on the spot, and Aleksey Lagoda, who was injured, was nevertheless able to shoot one of the criminals (as it turned out later, Roman Podkopayev, the leader and organizer of the gang, was) and injure the former woman. Soon reinforcements arrived. Police detained a wounded criminal and found a tent camp in a forest belt. There was another woman and a minor girl in the camp. Very quickly, the police found and the alleged accomplices of the gang - spouses Sinelnik, who lived in Aksay district. There was no limit to the surprise of the operatives when they learned that Sergey Sinelnik was their colleague, the inspector of the traffic police of the Aksai district of the Rostov region. Sergey and his wife Anastasia were detained. Thus began the exposure of the gang, which terrified the southern Russian regions.
The list of crimes committed by the gang of Amazons is impressive. On the territory of the Rostov region, the gang was operating from 2008 to 2013 years. During these five years, a whole series of murders and robberies were committed. The victims of many of them were law enforcement officers, but casual victims were also killed. Already at the trial, Inessa Tarverdiyeva said that “out of hatred” policemen were killed.
7 February 2008 of the year. Aksay, Rostov region - killed Colonel of Police Mikhail Zlydnev, head of the information security department of the regional State Drug Control Agency, and his wife. They were shot in their own household, carrying out of the house two jackets and a TV tuner.
17 July 2008 of the year. Aksaysky district of the Rostov region - a car was shot on the federal highway. The Rostov citizen Alexey Sazonov who was in it was killed, and his companion Julia Vasilyeva was seriously injured - one of the few victims of the Amazons who were lucky to survive. During this attack, the gangsters took away only the women's handbag and purse.
10 March 2009 of the year. Novocherkassk, Rostov Region - the criminals broke into a residential building and shot Saiga from a carbine, then finished off with knives, two people. The booty this time was a laptop, camera, video camera, boots, sheepskin coat and jacket.
November 29 2012 of the year. Novocherkassk, Rostov region. Killed Vadim Lozhkov - the owner of the household, which tried to rob the "Amazons".
16 March 2013 of the year. Aksay, Rostov region. Nikolai Kutsekon was killed - a traffic police officer whose homeowners the criminals also tried to rob.
24 April 2013, Aksai district of the Rostov region. Andrei Yurin was killed - also a traffic police officer. Miraculously managed to save his wife and children, who closed in the house.
In 2012-2013 gangsters launched a series of attacks on police officers and private security guards. So, 9 September 2012, in Novocherkassk, the crew of the private security arrived at the alarm system in the dental clinic. Suddenly, criminals attacked the police. Both officers of the PSB were killed, a machine gun and two pistols were taken from them. 8 On April 2013, in Novocherkassk, under similar circumstances, the crew of a private security company was fired upon, having arrived at a call to a grocery store. One of the Chopovs died, the other was seriously injured.
It is not known how long the bloody orgy of the “Amazons” gang would have continued if it had not been for the exploits of the police - Ivan Shakhov and Alexei Lagoda, who then stopped suspicious people near the Gazelle. The bloody trail of the gang impressed even seasoned investigators. It turned out that Roman Podkopayev and his cohabitant Inessa Tarverdiyeva began their criminal way of being shot while they were detained back in the distant 1990s. Podkopaev and Tarverdiyeva lived in the village of Divnoye, Stavropol Territory. Roman committed the first murder even when he was a student at the Stavropol Medical Academy, where he studied as a dentist - he slaughtered his teacher from mercenary motives. The next victim was the husband of Inessa Tarverdiyeva Arzu, from whom Roman took Inessa. Podkopaev committed several more murders in Darny before the gang switched to the Rostov region. The villagers were told that they were leaving for shabashki, while they themselves went to rob and kill.
Gradually, Victoria’s daughter Tarverdiyeva and Anastasia Podkopayeva’s sister, who was married to Aksai traffic police officer Sergei Sinelnik, were drafted into criminal activity. Using his official position, a police officer could very well help a criminal gang, covering it from colleagues and timely transmitting information about the actions of law enforcement officers.
More than thirty people were killed by criminals over the many years of the gang’s existence. But perhaps the most high-profile crime in which the Amazons were accused was the murder of the Chudakovs family. This is a very scary and complicated story, the true circumstances of which are still unknown to the public.
8 June 2009 of the year on the federal highway M-4 "Don", near the village of Rassvet of Aksai district of the Rostov region, was attacked a car in which husband Dmitry Chudakov, wife Irina and two children, 11-year-old Veronika returned from rest in a sanatorium and 7-year-old Sasha. The head of the family, Dmitry Chudakov, served in the rank of lieutenant colonel as a commander of the SOBR unit in the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Nizhny Novgorod Region. The whole family of eccentric was brutally murdered. What only versions did not arise in the investigation - at first they accused the akshayanin Alexei Serenko, who spent two years in the remand prison. Then they tried to hang the Kudakovs on the notorious Tsapkov from Kuschevka, and finally they officially accused the gang of “Amazons”, although this accusation caused criticism from many people watching the process, including the mother of the murdered lieutenant colonel Valentina Chudakova. She is convinced that the real killers of his son are not the Amazons. But we will not go into the discussion of this issue, especially since in the media for the eight years that have passed since the tragedy, a large amount of material has been published.
Roman Podkopaev was killed during the arrest. Thus, the main accomplices, Inessa and Victoria Tarverdiyev, and the married couple Sinelnik, who were actively helping the criminals, were to answer for the murders committed by the gang. But the sentence imposed by 5 December surprised the public. Inessa Tarverdiyeva, who, along with the deceased Roman Podkopayev, played a key role in the gang, was sentenced to 21 year of imprisonment. Victoria Tarverdiyeva received 16 years imprisonment. Anastasia Sinelnik received 19 years of imprisonment, and Sergey Sinelnik received 20 years of imprisonment. Inessa Tarverdiyeva herself stressed that she did not intend to appeal the sentence. Only Sergey Sinelnik will file an appeal, as he found the sentence too harsh.
The society assessed the sentence imposed on Inessa Tarverdiyeva as very mild - 21 had a year of imprisonment for participating in numerous murders, moreover, Inessa carried out a number of murders personally, the victims included women and children. Now the criminal law has significantly tightened, for example, in the direction of punishment of "narcotic" crimes. Twenty years in prison can be obtained for the drug trade, but here we are still talking about dozens of murders, not to mention other crimes.
But Russian legislation is liberal in relation to women - defendants - a woman cannot be sentenced to life imprisonment, no matter how many murders she commits. In addition, there are no women's strict-security colonies, so the Tarverdiyevs and Anastasia Sinelnik will serve their sentences in the general-regime colonies. At the same time, Sergei Sinelnik, who was not personally involved in the killings and attacks, received 20 years of imprisonment in a high security colony. Is it fair to say that men and women who are equal, according to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, bear different punishments for the acts they commit? Even for a small part of the bloody crimes committed by Inessa Tarverdiyeva, men would be sentenced to life imprisonment, in Soviet times - to the death penalty of execution.
The humane treatment of women who commit bloody crimes was inherited from the Soviet justice system. The use of capital punishment for women in the USSR was the absolute exception. In the entire history of Soviet justice, only a few death sentences were imposed on women. For example, 11 in August 1979 was shot by the court of Antonin Makarova - the infamous “Tonka-machine gunner”, who served as an executioner among the Nazis and personally shot at least one and a half thousand (!) Soviet citizens. In 1987, Tamara Ivanyutin was shot - a serial killer-poisoner, along with her accomplices, poisoned 13 people to death, and 9 poisoned personally Ivanyutin.
The third woman shot in the USSR was Berta Borodkina - perhaps the only one from the trio who did not deserve the death sentence. Burt Borodkin was shot in August 1983 of the year for systematic embezzlement of socialist property on a particularly large scale, which she committed as the head of the trust of restaurants and canteens in Gelendzhik. There were several other death sentences for women, but for all these sentences, the sentence was changed.
It should be noted that in a number of countries in the world women have no advantage over men in the area of the appointment or non-appointment of any punishment. For example, in Ukraine, women are sentenced to life imprisonment. In Kharkiv, there is the only Kachanovsky colony in the country where women sentenced to life are kept. The living conditions of their maintenance is much milder than that of men - “for life”. Women can be sentenced to life imprisonment in the UK, USA, EU countries, not to mention most countries in Asia and Africa. Equally, there are no differences regarding the sentence of death in countries where this punishment still exists. As a rule, only pregnant women are not sentenced to death.
However, a strange situation has developed in Russia when a woman is “more equal” than a man. A criminal responsible for the death of several, or even a few dozen people, receives a period comparable to that which a man can be assigned for one or two murders. This situation contradicts both the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Many public figures, politicians, and lawyers repeatedly say and write about the fact that men and women with regard to the imposition of punishment must be equalized in rights. But the situation remains unchanged. We see her injustice even by the example of the sentence to the Amazons - the immediate killer (woman) received 21 a year of imprisonment, the accomplice (man) - 20 years of imprisonment in a strict regime colony.
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