Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] The cases of Salikh Osmanov, sentenced to nine years in prison for sabotage, and Kazbek Emkuzhev, accused of involvement in a terrorist organization, were falsified to improve the security forces’ reporting, the lawyer claims.
As reported by the "Caucasian Knot", the examination on the basis of which the court found Kabardino-Balkaria resident Salikh Osmanov guilty of attempted sabotage was conducted with gross violations, according to the appeal against Osmanov's sentence. He accused the security forces of fabricating the case.
Osmanov was previously sentenced to nine years in prison for attempted sabotage. His defense filed an appeal against the decision of the Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria. According to the prosecution, the security forces found evidence of the attempted sabotage in Osmanov's phone. On June 20, the defense stated that the witness who claims to have sold the phone to Osmanov is connected to the security forces. According to Osmanov, the phone was planted during the search.
On October 1, 2022, the North Caucasus Federal District Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that in the Prokhladnensky District, two suspects in involvement in particularly serious crimes opened fire on employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Russian National Guard near a railroad track and were killed in the shootout.
The security forces were not injured. Firearms and an object similar to an improvised explosive device were found at the scene, the police reported. The two killed in the Prokhladnensky District were terrorists preparing sabotage on the railroad, their accomplice was detained, the FSB reported.
Lawyer Ramzan Uzuyev, who defended Salikh Osmanov, a defendant in the case of attempted sabotage in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic, called the case falsified – an “execution” legalized during investigative and operational actions, the “Word of Defense” project reported on March 20.
Two other defendants in the case, Yusup Kudayev and Asker Karmokov, were killed during the operation to prevent the alleged explosion. According to Uzuyev, the deaths of Kudayev and Karmokov were not investigated. He linked this to the practice of releasing the bodies of the deceased to relatives only after they renounce all claims.
During the trial, an independent expert for the defense established that the phone was first turned on only on August 31, and the files proving Osmanov's guilt were transferred there via Bluetooth much later than the time indicated in the case materials. The prosecution experts were unable to answer the defense's questions about the inconsistencies discovered, bypassing all the inconvenient points, Uzuyev said.
He noted that without the witness, who, as it turned out, was connected to the security forces, and the phone that this witness, according to him, sold to Osmanov, there would have been no case.
"When such cases are investigated, they are brought to the end, I am convinced that someone receives some medals, regalia, positions..."
Another prosecution witness, who was a secret witness in the case, told the defense that he was not pressured and was ready to testify in court, but the appellate court refused to call him for questioning. All these facts and inconsistencies, according to Uzuyev, directly indicate that the case was falsified. The lawyer assumes that this was done for the sake of statistics, to identify some saboteurs in the republic and receive rewards and promotions for their capture.
"The thing is that when such cases are investigated and brought to a conclusion, I am convinced that someone receives some medals, regalia, positions," he said in a video that the Memorial Human Rights Center published on its YouTube channel on March 20.
The defense intends to appeal the decision in cassation.
The second case Uzuyev is handling is that of 19-year-old Kazbek Emkuzhev from Nalchik, who is accused of participating in a terrorist organization. His case was initially handled by the same investigator as Osmanov's case. The lawyer believes that the case was also completely falsified.
On April 4, 2024, the father of one of the defendants, a former law enforcement officer who had religious conflicts with his son, began accusing him of extremism.
Ramzan Uzuyev believes that the authorities decided to take advantage of the opportunity to create another terrorism case. The defendant was detained with another defendant when they were returning from Dagestan, where they had gone to propose to a girl.
On April 8, a criminal case was opened, which is based on the testimony of two defendants - Aslan Makoyev and Ibragim Albogachiyev, who admitted that they took a bay'at (an oath of allegiance to the leader of Islam) and were going to attack someone.
In total, there are seven defendants in the case, three of whom are Kazbek Yemkuzhev, 19-year-old Tamirlan Chepchikov and 26-year-old Ratmir Murchayev, who were abducted by unknown persons, beaten and tortured with electric shock. Yemkuzhev reported that they were tortured together, but after a while they were separated, he was taken to an unknown location and held there until May 3, presumably to hide traces of violence.
According to him, Chepchikov and Murachaev were "liquidated" on April 12, there was no investigation into their deaths, Ramzan Uzuev suggests that their relatives were faced with the same choice as the relatives of Yusup Kudayev and Asker Karmokov in the case of Salikh Osmanov: the body will be released only if all claims are waived.
On April 11, 2024, during a counter-terrorism operation (CTO) in a gardening community in Nalchik, security forces killed two people . The dead were members of a cell of an international terrorist organization and were planning sabotage and terrorist attacks in Kabardino-Balkaria, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said. The Investigative Committee reported that it had opened a criminal case on the attempt on the lives of security forces and the illegal circulation of weapons and explosives.
In his opinion, Emkuzhev was saved by the fact that his mother took the recording of his abduction to the police and reported her son missing. On May 3, Emkuzhev found himself in the investigator's office and was questioned as a suspect, and then as an accused, although there is no information in the case about his detention. Emkuzhev's father and lawyer sent a statement to the Prosecutor General's Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs demanding that the actions of the unknown employees of the agencies involved in the abduction and torture of the young man be investigated.
According to Uzuyev, Yemkuzhev's father received a report in January of this year about the discovery of signs of a crime, but most likely a criminal case will never be opened.
Uzuyev pointed out that the case includes convictions for six more people for failure to report a crime, who, according to the investigation and the court, knew about the impending attack, the publication says.
Security forces in Kabardino-Balkaria regularly report on cases under the article on failure to report a crime. Thus, in November 2024, a court in Nalchik fined a third-year student 40,000 rubles who, knowing that three of his acquaintances had joined a cell of a banned terrorist organization, did not report this to law enforcement officers.
He noted that all the defendants in the case are connected only by the fact that they lived in the same area and used to play computer games in the same club.
Uzuyev indicated that the investigation limited his time to familiarize himself with the 11 volumes of the case, while the prosecutor approved the indictment in one day, having “studied” all the volumes of the case, the publication says.
"As my client aptly put it: 'In modern Russia, the FSB is like the new oprichniks.' No matter what petition they file, no matter how absurd the criminal case initiated by this agency, everyone turns a blind eye to it," Uzuyev said in the video.
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