Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Security forces and employees of the Uytash airport, in testimony read by the prosecutor at a hearing in the Aleksandrovsky Court of Stavropol, spoke of the impossibility of determining who exactly in the crowd threw stones. Four lawsuits have been filed against seven defendants, one of whom is accused of attacking a security officer.
As reported by the "Caucasian Knot", on October 24, the Aleksandrovsky Court of the Stavropol Territory began hearing the case against seven residents of Dagestan who are accused of participating in the riots at the Makhachkala airport. In the dock are Zhanmirza Aliyev, Ali Amirkhanov, Alimurat Babatov, Zapir Batyrbekov, Ramazan Karnayev, Ismail Salmakhanov, Makhach Tuchuyev. Depending on the degree of participation, they are accused of participating in mass riots, failure to comply with safety requirements at transport infrastructure facilities and vehicles, as well as using violence against a government official, the Stavropol Territory prosecutor's office reported.
What happened at Uytash airport and how the investigation is proceeding is described in the "Caucasian Knot" report "The Case of the Pogrom at Makhachkala Airport."
Today, in the Aleksandrovsky District Court of the Stavropol Territory in the village of Aleksandrovskoye, a hearing was held on the case of seven Dagestanis accused under Articles 263 and 212 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for the events of October 29, 2023 at the Makhachkala airport; one of the defendants is also accused under Article 318 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
The defendants took part in the hearing via videoconference from the pretrial detention center in Makhachkala. They were represented in the courtroom by seven local appointed lawyers. They refused to talk to the press, but one of them told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that they had communicated with their clients via videoconference. In addition, some of the defendants, according to one of the defense lawyers, have lawyers by agreement, but they were not present at the hearing.
The hearing lasted from 9.30 to 16.30 with an hour-long lunch break. For almost six hours, the prosecutor's office representative read out written testimony from witnesses - more than 20 people, most of them Dagestan law enforcement officers who were at the airport that day, as well as several airport employees. As one of the defense attorneys clarified during one of the breaks, the defendants did not object to the reading out of the written testimony of these witnesses.
Neither the lawyers nor the prosecutor's office representative answered the question of the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent about why the name of one of the defendants, Zhanmirza Aliyev, was hidden on the court's website. Judge Natalya Neumyvakina, when asked whether there were any minors among the defendants, answered that there were none, without specifying why the name of Aliyev, who is the only defendant charged under the article on assault on a security officer, was hidden.
At the hearing, all the names were called: Amirkhanov, Babatov, Batyrbekov, Salmakhanov, Aliyev, Karnayev, Tuchuyev - the judge asked at the beginning of the first part of the hearing and at the beginning of the second, after lunch, whether the defendants were there (and they answered in turn, "Here").
The defendants simply sat in the room in front of the camera silently throughout the hearing. Only once did Judge Neumyvakina ask them if they had already received the claims, and they replied that they had not. As one of the lawyers later explained to the correspondent, four companies had filed claims for damages against these defendants. Whether these claims will be considered as part of this case or whether the judge will separate them into separate proceedings is not yet known, he said.
| This lot are the kind that only learn by peeing on the electric fence — there’s a lot of expensive damage to be paid for, according to previous reports. Still, there is a large number of miscreants to divide the sum among, so it could be worse. |
The monitor on which the video conference was broadcast was turned on at high volume - every movement of the defendants, every stir, every sigh was heard very loudly. At the same time, they walked around the room in which they were, and a loud hum, rustling, grinding constantly emanated from the monitor, while the prosecutor read the testimony quietly and some of the testimony in the courtroom, even three meters away from the state prosecutor, was poorly heard.
A number of witnesses said that some of the law enforcement officers received bodily injuries that day as a result of the protesters' actions. In general, the witnesses said what they did that day, where they were, how they ended up at the airport. They described the events in general. Among those interviewed were police officers and the Russian National Guard from Makhachkala and Kaspiysk, but also security forces from Buynaksk, Izberbash, Karabudakhkent, and Serkogaly. Thus, the head of the rear services of the OMVD of Russia for the Sergokalinsky District, Zaur Sultanov, said (according to the read protocol of his interrogation) that he took part in maintaining public order and suppressing mass riots on October 29, 2023.
That day, he was at home, but after a call from his superiors, he arrived at his place of duty, like his other colleagues, more than 30 people. In the same way, police officers from other districts also went to Makhachkala, according to these testimonies - in particular, about 60 employees of the OMVD for the Buinaksk district, according to the testimonies of another security officer.
They estimated the number of people at the airport differently - from 1,000-1,500 to 3,000 people. Many noted that they could not name the exact number, since they did not see the whole picture, but there were indeed a lot of people - at first much more than representatives of the airport security service and security forces, due to which it was not possible to contain the protesters.
Many of the interrogated security officers said that their colleagues had received injuries, including serious ones - in particular, from being hit by stones thrown by protesters, which hit them in the head, for example, at the same time, everyone noted that they would not be able to identify those who threw the stones, since the stones were flying from the crowd, plus many in this crowd had their faces covered.
According to the testimony of the deputy commander of the patrol and guard service regiment of the OMVD of Russia for Makhachkala Shamil Tagibov, despite the fact that only from his unit, in particular, there were almost 100 employees at the airport, it was not possible to cope with the protesters, since there were too many of them. "We could not stop them, since there was a significant imbalance of forces in favor of the protesters," the prosecutor quoted the written testimony of the witness.
At the same time, according to the testimony of the head of the airport's aviation security service, Rajab Karimov, no one from the airport's employees was injured that day. About 80 employees of the aviation security service were on duty at the airport that day, but they did not have an algorithm of actions and interaction with law enforcement agencies in the event of mass riots; it was not developed, since there were no such precedents in Russia before, he said.
According to written testimony read by the prosecutor, protesters broke through the cordon, broke down doors, ran along the runway - witnesses spoke about violations that they personally saw. The interrogation protocol of the airport's aviation security inspector, Kurban Betsaliev, says how some of the protesters surrounded the plane, thinking that there were people of Jewish nationality on it, and someone even climbed onto the wing of the plane to make sure that there were no passengers on the plane. "Our duties do not include maintaining public order, and therefore I was not obliged and had no right to take any action to prevent a violation of public order," he said.
| ”I was just following orders…but there were none given that night. What’s a man to do?” |
The next hearing will take place on November 13 at 9.30, and it is planned to read out about 10 more written testimonies, the judge said at the end of the hearing. "We will also try to ensure the victim's appearance again tomorrow," she noted, and the hearing ended.
The cases of the riots at the Makhachkala airport are being heard in Kuban and Stavropol Krai. Earlier, the Armavir City Court sentenced the defendants in the case of the riots at the Makhachkala airport Anvarbek Atayev, Islam Ibragimov, Magomed Omaraskhabov, Rabadan Radzhabov and Salik Ramazanov to terms ranging from six years, four months to nine years. The court issued a harsh sentence without evidence of the defendants' guilt, the lawyers and relatives of the convicted stated. The defense appealed the sentence.
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