Case of Lieutenant Arakcheev
The events in question took place in Chechnya in the 2003 year. By this time, the main fighting had already moved to the Shatoi, Vedensky and Nozhay-Yurt mountain areas. But the militants appeared in the district of Grozny. The street battles were replaced by a mine-explosive, partisan war, in which the local population was drawn. In the midst of poverty and devastation, hundreds of American dollars were sought by many who wanted to install a land mine or mine near the road. In those terrible days, there were constant explosions of buildings, equipment, military columns and individuals. According to statistics, in 2002 alone, more than seventy terrorist attacks took place in the Chechen capital in the past year. The engineers were worth their weight in gold, because their skills saved the lives of others, often completely unknown to them. Every day, stretching into a chain, brave people with probes and metal detectors inspected every hummock and every bush. For work they needed complete concentration, absolute peace of mind. God forbid to be nervous and miss the changes that happened overnight. It was also impossible to trust the equipment, after the end of hostilities in Chechnya there was so much iron left that the metal detectors were ringing almost continuously. In places where you can lay a landmine, the sappers left imperceptible marks. Periodically, the specialists of the engineering intelligence group found deadly "gifts". It was necessary, risking a life, to establish an invoice charge and to undermine them. And so every day, of course, without weekends and holidays ...
Sergey Vladimirovich Arakcheev was born 6 July 1981 year in the village of Rozhdestveno, located in the Vladimir region. After eight classes of rural school, Sergey entered vocational school in Nizhny Novgorod. After school, he earned his living as a simple welder until he was taken to the army. The service in the Armed Forces of our country appealed to the young guy, and he remained on a contract basis. In 2002, Sergey successfully graduated from the North Caucasian Military Command Red Banner Institute of Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in Vladikavkaz. He served near Moscow in the division of the internal troops. Dzerzhinsky.
20 June 2002 of the year together with the regiment of the division Sergey was sent to Chechnya as part of an engineering company. He could well refuse to travel, but did not want to leave his fighters alone and wrote a report. The unit under his leadership specialized in mine clearance. For less than eight months of service on the route entrusted to him there was not a single blast. Sergey Arakcheev, together with his people, found and defused more than thirty explosive devices from conventional stretch marks to whole bunches of 152-mm artillery shells, which have tremendous destructive power. Sergey was awarded the medals "For Military Valor" and "For Military Valor", the medal of Suvorov. He also was the owner of the award dagger, handed personally by the division commander. A few days after returning from a trip, Sergey Arakcheev and Yevgeny Khudyakov, a senior lieutenant and intelligence officer from the same division, were accused of killing three civilians in the Chechen Republic.
The process of this case was five years. At the same time, several people from the GRU special forces headed by Captain Ulman were tried. And in fact, and in this case, not finding compelling arguments for the prosecution, the jury twice justified the officers. In both cases, a decisive third trial without a jury was held. And the result was also the same - a conviction with a long sentence. Quite a lot of parallels, except for one moment. Ulman’s Special Forces officers did not deny the fact of the murder of Chechens, following an order during a combat operation. S. Arakcheev and E. Khudyakov did not admit their guilt. So what happened in the winter of 2003 year near the city of Grozny?
On January 15, two people in black masks covering their faces on an armored personnel carrier stopped the old Volga with local residents in it - four women and a certain citizen Yunusov. Having released the women on all four sides, they put the driver into the troop compartment of the armored personnel carrier with worn-out numbers and shot the Volga. Turning onto the road to the Severny airfield, in a few minutes unknown people stopped KamAZ in the same way. The three men inside were shot at point-blank range, and the truck was blown up. After that, the killers, without removing their masks, tormented the captured driver of the Volga, Yunusov, for half the night, and left for the dead, near the executed Volga, for some unknown reason, in the morning. Really horrible crime in its cruelty and senselessness.
The criminal case was instituted by the prosecutor's office of the city of Grozny 16 on January 2003 of the year after the senior police officer of the Grozny district police department, police major Supryadkin discovered a burned-out KAMAZ and three bodies. And 17 March of the same year in the division to them. Dzerzhinsky Sergey Arakcheev received a request to go to Khankala as a witness in the case of the killing of civilians. However, upon arrival in the city, Sergey was immediately arrested. The prosecution was represented by a human rights activist from Chechnya, Minkail Ezhiev. Relatives of the victims decided not to appear at the trial. Ezhiev was sure that Arakcheev and Khudyakov were killed by civilians. And they did it in a state of intoxication, avenging the death of their comrades. According to the prosecution, Arakcheev and Khudyakov took the men out of the car, ordered them to lie down and shot them point-blank. Since Sergey was a sapper, he decided to blow up KamAZ. After that, they mocked the driver of the Volga all night, and then beaten him up and with his legs shot out on the road. He was accidentally found by the police who had been scouring the area, who was alarmed by the rescued women who were relatives of the missing person.
To a fair question of how such detailed details of the bloody adventures of Russian soldiers are known, Minkail Ezhiev referred to the testimony. During the preliminary investigation, all the persons testifying against Arakcheev and Khudyakov told the same well-toothed one history. Even minor details were the same. And the stories of "eyewitnesses" printed on the computer coincided up to grammatical and spelling errors. Later almost all the soldiers said that they testified under pressure and refused them. The threats were really terrible, they promised to send the fighters to the Wahhabi cell, and also inform the militants of the addresses of their relatives and friends. Despite this, by the first trial the prosecution had testimony of only two witnesses.
The jury was formed by 11 on February 2004 of the year, and on June 28 it issued an acquittal, on the basis of which the North Caucasian District Military Court released Sergei Arakcheev. And here the most interesting began. November 11 The 2004 of the Military College of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation canceled the acquittal. The basis was that ten of the twelve members of the board were listed on the jury lists for the 2003 year, and the case was considered in the 2004.
4 On April 2005, a second jury was formed, and the court resumed its work. It should be added that the second group of jurors was gathered from representatives of indigenous peoples inhabiting the Caucasus. Russian surnames were specially deleted from the list of seventy people. As a result, October 6 of the same year, Khudyakov and Arakcheev were again found innocent of the crime. Opinions of members of the board were divided, but more than one person voted for innocence compared to the first court. October 12 2005-th Sergey Arakcheev was again acquitted by the North Caucasus District Military Court. Obviously, it didn’t suit anyone, because on April 25 of 2006 of the year and this “disagreeable” decision was canceled by the Military Collegium. Given the intractability of the jury, this time it was decided to conduct the process without them. Now, three judges of the North Caucasus District Military Court, headed by V.E. Tsibulnik, who graduated from the Sverdlovsk Tank-Artillery School in the past. By this time, it became clear to all that it was not worth waiting for sympathy from the authorities. Officers will be judged to the "victorious end."
December 20 began preliminary hearings on the case, which looked like a pre-rehearsed play. Any, even obviously far-fetched arguments of the charges were accepted unconditionally, the defendants were deprived of the minimum legal requirements for protection. So that the whole farce of this “court” is understandable, it is worth citing a number of materials attached to the case.
Inspection of decomposed bodies was carried out four months after the funeral right in the graves in the presence of local residents. An autopsy was not, however, clearly ingenious, medical experts were able to determine visually not only the causes of death, but also the caliber and type of weapon. Conclusions specialized ballistic examination from the laboratory in no. However, this is not all. The final verdict of forensic scientists says that in the corpse of one of the men there is an uncured bullet. The defense has repeatedly offered to repeat the exhumation of the corpses in order to get it and compare it with those who were shot from Arakcheev’s machine gun. The bullet could shed light on very much in this matter. However, the court gave a real performance. The Arakcheev machine gun was recognized as worn and rusty, and therefore unsuitable for research. All security agencies of Chechnya have declared that they will not be able to ensure the safety of those conducting the exhumation, since this action is contrary to the norms of Islam. The judges also ignored the fact that according to investigators Arakcheev killed civilians from a machine gun under the number 7982965. Weapons with this number even fell into the final indictment. But such a machine has never been, not only in Sergei, but even in his military unit.
In addition, Judge Tsybulnik considered convincing the conclusion about the undermining of KAMAZ, issued by the local "expert" (by the way, a labor teacher by training) who conducted the explosive technical examination for the first time in his life. And this, in spite of the uncovered traces of explosives, as well as the testimony of Russia's leading explosives expert Kondratiev, who claims that it is impossible to undermine the truck in the manner indicated in the case. I must say, the court in this case did not at all resort to the help of experts ...
Alibi Sergey Arakcheeva confirmed about thirty witnesses. Among them are senior officers, lieutenant colonels and colonels. As the only sapper officer of the 3186 military unit, he and his group each morning went to engineering reconnaissance, checking the area of responsibility. Replace it was impossible. Presented by the defense logs of hostilities and entry-exit from the territory of the military equipment part confirmed Sergey's innocence. Moreover, on that ill-fated day, Arakcheev and Khudyakov were in completely different districts of Grozny. And they never knew each other. However, their military unit was closest to the place where the bodies were found. Someone really wanted to make extreme Russian soldiers. And who if not sappers and scouts constantly drove along this road.
The lawlessness created in this process reflects one fact well. A witness for the defense, the chief of staff of the regiment where Arakcheev served, the lieutenant colonel Novik met in the courtroom with Colonel Igor Shaboltanov, who was the state prosecutor. In it, he recognized an officer who had previously come to his unit, who called himself Shebyanin and attempted to intimidate him, inclining him to refuse to testify. For such a criminal act, the judges confined themselves only to a warning to the prosecutor.
But V.E. Tsybulnik considered indisputable the testimony of witnesses - the injured Yunusov and Umantgeriyeva, putting them at the basis of the guilty verdict. The main thing in these testimonies was that these citizens were able to identify six months later they had seen masked masked people they had not seen before. They recognized Arakcheeva by the eyes, and Khudyakov by the eyebrows! At the same time, Yunusov told the incident three times quite differently, until, obviously, he was not forced to learn the “correct” version. He explained the free interpretation of the facts by the “state of shock”, which, however, had no effect on the supernatural abilities to recognize people by eyebrows and eyes.
December 27 2007 year V.E. Tsybulnik announced his sentence. Sergei Arakcheev received fifteen years in a colony, where he went straight from the courtroom. Yevgeny Khudyakov did not appear at the announcement of the verdict. For this, he received seventeen years and was put on the federal wanted list. Let me remind you that the terrorists who seized the hospital in Budennovsk, received an average of about nine years.
In recent years, the Arakcheev family lived very hard. Sergey's contract ended, but because of the investigation he could not leave the army, and who needs an employee who constantly leaves for court sessions. Many people from different places of Russia transferred donations. According to the story of his wife Sergei Lyudmila, he never considered the possibility of escape, like the Ulman group. During the breaks of the full six hours of the sentence, Arakcheev walked on the street. He already understood the final verdict, but did not want to run, did not see the point, although some people offered help, even persuaded. Escape would mean admitting his guilt to them, and he said: “Five years of life broke for me, I don’t want to beat it to the end.”
It is sad that the phenomenon of a democratic society, like a jury trial, sincerely mocked. There is a joyless joke among the military that the whole national militia will soon run after the entire national army. After the trial, rallies in support of the officers were held around the country, and on the Internet, heated debates between human rights activists and supporters of convicted children have not subsided. 28 August 2008 year, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of Russia rejected the appeals of Arakcheyev’s defenders, leaving the sentence unchanged. In the summer of 2010, a letter was sent to the reception office of the President of our country with a request to cancel the unjust verdict or at least conduct a second investigation, signed by more than eight thousand people. In October, a twenty-minute documentary “I have no blood,” was shot on the personal funds of Igor Vittel. In it, Sergey, who is in a colony, with the use of a polygraph, tells about his life, service and details of the trial.
Sergey Vladimirovich Arakcheev was born 6 July 1981 year in the village of Rozhdestveno, located in the Vladimir region. After eight classes of rural school, Sergey entered vocational school in Nizhny Novgorod. After school, he earned his living as a simple welder until he was taken to the army. The service in the Armed Forces of our country appealed to the young guy, and he remained on a contract basis. In 2002, Sergey successfully graduated from the North Caucasian Military Command Red Banner Institute of Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in Vladikavkaz. He served near Moscow in the division of the internal troops. Dzerzhinsky.
20 June 2002 of the year together with the regiment of the division Sergey was sent to Chechnya as part of an engineering company. He could well refuse to travel, but did not want to leave his fighters alone and wrote a report. The unit under his leadership specialized in mine clearance. For less than eight months of service on the route entrusted to him there was not a single blast. Sergey Arakcheev, together with his people, found and defused more than thirty explosive devices from conventional stretch marks to whole bunches of 152-mm artillery shells, which have tremendous destructive power. Sergey was awarded the medals "For Military Valor" and "For Military Valor", the medal of Suvorov. He also was the owner of the award dagger, handed personally by the division commander. A few days after returning from a trip, Sergey Arakcheev and Yevgeny Khudyakov, a senior lieutenant and intelligence officer from the same division, were accused of killing three civilians in the Chechen Republic.
7 June 2012 of the year in the correctional colony No. 3 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation in the Ryazan region a solemn rewarding of convict Sergey Vladimirovich Arakcheev with the award-winning “Silver Cross” took place. The award was presented by Viktor Fedorovich Boborykin, Chairman of the Public Observation Commission for the Ryazan Region, on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church and the All-Russian public organization “Combat Brotherhood”
The process of this case was five years. At the same time, several people from the GRU special forces headed by Captain Ulman were tried. And in fact, and in this case, not finding compelling arguments for the prosecution, the jury twice justified the officers. In both cases, a decisive third trial without a jury was held. And the result was also the same - a conviction with a long sentence. Quite a lot of parallels, except for one moment. Ulman’s Special Forces officers did not deny the fact of the murder of Chechens, following an order during a combat operation. S. Arakcheev and E. Khudyakov did not admit their guilt. So what happened in the winter of 2003 year near the city of Grozny?
On January 15, two people in black masks covering their faces on an armored personnel carrier stopped the old Volga with local residents in it - four women and a certain citizen Yunusov. Having released the women on all four sides, they put the driver into the troop compartment of the armored personnel carrier with worn-out numbers and shot the Volga. Turning onto the road to the Severny airfield, in a few minutes unknown people stopped KamAZ in the same way. The three men inside were shot at point-blank range, and the truck was blown up. After that, the killers, without removing their masks, tormented the captured driver of the Volga, Yunusov, for half the night, and left for the dead, near the executed Volga, for some unknown reason, in the morning. Really horrible crime in its cruelty and senselessness.
The criminal case was instituted by the prosecutor's office of the city of Grozny 16 on January 2003 of the year after the senior police officer of the Grozny district police department, police major Supryadkin discovered a burned-out KAMAZ and three bodies. And 17 March of the same year in the division to them. Dzerzhinsky Sergey Arakcheev received a request to go to Khankala as a witness in the case of the killing of civilians. However, upon arrival in the city, Sergey was immediately arrested. The prosecution was represented by a human rights activist from Chechnya, Minkail Ezhiev. Relatives of the victims decided not to appear at the trial. Ezhiev was sure that Arakcheev and Khudyakov were killed by civilians. And they did it in a state of intoxication, avenging the death of their comrades. According to the prosecution, Arakcheev and Khudyakov took the men out of the car, ordered them to lie down and shot them point-blank. Since Sergey was a sapper, he decided to blow up KamAZ. After that, they mocked the driver of the Volga all night, and then beaten him up and with his legs shot out on the road. He was accidentally found by the police who had been scouring the area, who was alarmed by the rescued women who were relatives of the missing person.
To a fair question of how such detailed details of the bloody adventures of Russian soldiers are known, Minkail Ezhiev referred to the testimony. During the preliminary investigation, all the persons testifying against Arakcheev and Khudyakov told the same well-toothed one history. Even minor details were the same. And the stories of "eyewitnesses" printed on the computer coincided up to grammatical and spelling errors. Later almost all the soldiers said that they testified under pressure and refused them. The threats were really terrible, they promised to send the fighters to the Wahhabi cell, and also inform the militants of the addresses of their relatives and friends. Despite this, by the first trial the prosecution had testimony of only two witnesses.
The jury was formed by 11 on February 2004 of the year, and on June 28 it issued an acquittal, on the basis of which the North Caucasian District Military Court released Sergei Arakcheev. And here the most interesting began. November 11 The 2004 of the Military College of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation canceled the acquittal. The basis was that ten of the twelve members of the board were listed on the jury lists for the 2003 year, and the case was considered in the 2004.
Dmitry Rogozin noted: “It's hard to even imagine what negative consequences in the psychology of Russian officers were made by the decisions on Ulman and Arakcheev. Now every professional military will think about whether he should participate in a military operation, whether to use weapon against the militants, should he even defend the Fatherland. And all because each of them can then be first in the courtroom, and then behind bars. ”
4 On April 2005, a second jury was formed, and the court resumed its work. It should be added that the second group of jurors was gathered from representatives of indigenous peoples inhabiting the Caucasus. Russian surnames were specially deleted from the list of seventy people. As a result, October 6 of the same year, Khudyakov and Arakcheev were again found innocent of the crime. Opinions of members of the board were divided, but more than one person voted for innocence compared to the first court. October 12 2005-th Sergey Arakcheev was again acquitted by the North Caucasus District Military Court. Obviously, it didn’t suit anyone, because on April 25 of 2006 of the year and this “disagreeable” decision was canceled by the Military Collegium. Given the intractability of the jury, this time it was decided to conduct the process without them. Now, three judges of the North Caucasus District Military Court, headed by V.E. Tsibulnik, who graduated from the Sverdlovsk Tank-Artillery School in the past. By this time, it became clear to all that it was not worth waiting for sympathy from the authorities. Officers will be judged to the "victorious end."
Shortly before the verdict was announced, Sergey Arakcheev told one correspondent: “At first, the jury trial was tested on us as if it were experimental animals. And since he did not make the necessary verdict, he was canceled, in another way trying to figure out the circumstances that they need. In this case, we in every possible way wrung our hands. We managed to objectively prove our innocence and wanted to get on the trail of real killers, but we were denied almost everything. ”
December 20 began preliminary hearings on the case, which looked like a pre-rehearsed play. Any, even obviously far-fetched arguments of the charges were accepted unconditionally, the defendants were deprived of the minimum legal requirements for protection. So that the whole farce of this “court” is understandable, it is worth citing a number of materials attached to the case.
Inspection of decomposed bodies was carried out four months after the funeral right in the graves in the presence of local residents. An autopsy was not, however, clearly ingenious, medical experts were able to determine visually not only the causes of death, but also the caliber and type of weapon. Conclusions specialized ballistic examination from the laboratory in no. However, this is not all. The final verdict of forensic scientists says that in the corpse of one of the men there is an uncured bullet. The defense has repeatedly offered to repeat the exhumation of the corpses in order to get it and compare it with those who were shot from Arakcheev’s machine gun. The bullet could shed light on very much in this matter. However, the court gave a real performance. The Arakcheev machine gun was recognized as worn and rusty, and therefore unsuitable for research. All security agencies of Chechnya have declared that they will not be able to ensure the safety of those conducting the exhumation, since this action is contrary to the norms of Islam. The judges also ignored the fact that according to investigators Arakcheev killed civilians from a machine gun under the number 7982965. Weapons with this number even fell into the final indictment. But such a machine has never been, not only in Sergei, but even in his military unit.
In addition, Judge Tsybulnik considered convincing the conclusion about the undermining of KAMAZ, issued by the local "expert" (by the way, a labor teacher by training) who conducted the explosive technical examination for the first time in his life. And this, in spite of the uncovered traces of explosives, as well as the testimony of Russia's leading explosives expert Kondratiev, who claims that it is impossible to undermine the truck in the manner indicated in the case. I must say, the court in this case did not at all resort to the help of experts ...
Alibi Sergey Arakcheeva confirmed about thirty witnesses. Among them are senior officers, lieutenant colonels and colonels. As the only sapper officer of the 3186 military unit, he and his group each morning went to engineering reconnaissance, checking the area of responsibility. Replace it was impossible. Presented by the defense logs of hostilities and entry-exit from the territory of the military equipment part confirmed Sergey's innocence. Moreover, on that ill-fated day, Arakcheev and Khudyakov were in completely different districts of Grozny. And they never knew each other. However, their military unit was closest to the place where the bodies were found. Someone really wanted to make extreme Russian soldiers. And who if not sappers and scouts constantly drove along this road.
Being the representative of Russia in NATO, Dmitry Rogozin commented on the final decision of the court: “The verdict is simply insulting. I am sure that the real killers are walking free. They laugh at our prosecutor's office, which followed the easiest path. After all, she found the nearest military unit and soldiers who could theoretically be at the crime scene. It is absurd that a belligerent army is judged by the laws of peacetime. ”
The lawlessness created in this process reflects one fact well. A witness for the defense, the chief of staff of the regiment where Arakcheev served, the lieutenant colonel Novik met in the courtroom with Colonel Igor Shaboltanov, who was the state prosecutor. In it, he recognized an officer who had previously come to his unit, who called himself Shebyanin and attempted to intimidate him, inclining him to refuse to testify. For such a criminal act, the judges confined themselves only to a warning to the prosecutor.
But V.E. Tsybulnik considered indisputable the testimony of witnesses - the injured Yunusov and Umantgeriyeva, putting them at the basis of the guilty verdict. The main thing in these testimonies was that these citizens were able to identify six months later they had seen masked masked people they had not seen before. They recognized Arakcheeva by the eyes, and Khudyakov by the eyebrows! At the same time, Yunusov told the incident three times quite differently, until, obviously, he was not forced to learn the “correct” version. He explained the free interpretation of the facts by the “state of shock”, which, however, had no effect on the supernatural abilities to recognize people by eyebrows and eyes.
December 27 2007 year V.E. Tsybulnik announced his sentence. Sergei Arakcheev received fifteen years in a colony, where he went straight from the courtroom. Yevgeny Khudyakov did not appear at the announcement of the verdict. For this, he received seventeen years and was put on the federal wanted list. Let me remind you that the terrorists who seized the hospital in Budennovsk, received an average of about nine years.
Giving interviews to one print edition, Sergey Dmitriy Agranovsky’s lawyer said: “At all times and in all countries, the military was honored and treated them with great respect. Judges Evgenia Khudyakov and Sergey Arakcheev are sentenced to lose all military decorations and military ranks. But Arakcheev not just got his medals. He fought, disarmed mines and land mines, received a concussion. It is unlikely that the judge knows anything about these explosive devices. It turns out that those who, risking their lives, defend our country, unlike any civilian, do not have the right to trial by jury. No, that’s not to be the case with the military! ”
In recent years, the Arakcheev family lived very hard. Sergey's contract ended, but because of the investigation he could not leave the army, and who needs an employee who constantly leaves for court sessions. Many people from different places of Russia transferred donations. According to the story of his wife Sergei Lyudmila, he never considered the possibility of escape, like the Ulman group. During the breaks of the full six hours of the sentence, Arakcheev walked on the street. He already understood the final verdict, but did not want to run, did not see the point, although some people offered help, even persuaded. Escape would mean admitting his guilt to them, and he said: “Five years of life broke for me, I don’t want to beat it to the end.”
From the last words in court, told by Arakcheyev to journalists: “I don’t think to give up. From prison I will seek justice until everything ends. I am not guilty and never reconcile with the charges. I will fight to the end. Now this is the goal of my life. For my family, for future children, for relatives and relatives. So that no one would ever say that Sergey is a murderer. ”
It is sad that the phenomenon of a democratic society, like a jury trial, sincerely mocked. There is a joyless joke among the military that the whole national militia will soon run after the entire national army. After the trial, rallies in support of the officers were held around the country, and on the Internet, heated debates between human rights activists and supporters of convicted children have not subsided. 28 August 2008 year, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of Russia rejected the appeals of Arakcheyev’s defenders, leaving the sentence unchanged. In the summer of 2010, a letter was sent to the reception office of the President of our country with a request to cancel the unjust verdict or at least conduct a second investigation, signed by more than eight thousand people. In October, a twenty-minute documentary “I have no blood,” was shot on the personal funds of Igor Vittel. In it, Sergey, who is in a colony, with the use of a polygraph, tells about his life, service and details of the trial.
Documentary film "ON ME BLOOD NO"
Question M. Judenich - to V.Putin 10.12.2012
Question M. Judenich - to V.Putin 10.12.2012
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