Network Case defendants. Photo by Andrei Karev. Courtesy of Novaya Gazeta

Prosecutor Asks Court to Sentence Penza Network Case Defendants to Up to Eighteen Years in Prison

OVD Info

December 26, 2019

The state prosecutor has asked the Volga District Military Court to sentence the five defendants in the Penza portion of the Network Case to between six and eighteen years in prison, according to a member of the campaign to support the defendants who was present in the courtroom.

The prosecution asked the court to hand down the longest sentence to Dmitry Pchelintsev: 18 years in a maximum-security penal colony. It asked the court to sentence Ilya Shakursky to 16 years, Andrei Chernov to 14 years, Maxim Ivankin to 13 years, Mikhail Kulkov to 10, Vasily Kuksov to 9 years, and Arman Sagynbayev to 6 years. It asked that all the defendants except Kuksov and Sagynbayev be sent to maximum-security penal colonies.

The prosecutor told the court that the defendants’ accounts that they were tortured into testifying had not been corroborated.

All the defendants are accused of involvement in a “terrorist community,” punishable under Article 205.4.4 of the Russian Criminal Code. Pchelinsky and Shakursky are accused of organizing a “terrorist community,” punishable under Article 205.4. In addition, some of the defendants are accused of illegal possession of firearms (Article 222.1), illegal possession of explosives (Article 222.1.1), attempted arson or bombing with mischievous intent (Article 167.2 in combination with Article 30.3), and large-scale attempted drug trafficking (Article 228.1.4.g in combination with Article 30.3).

The criminal case against the Network “terrorist community” was launched in October 2017. According to the FSB, eleven young men in Penza and Petersburg organized the Network and were planning to overthrow the government. The defendants in the case claimed the FSB subjected them to psychological pressure, tortured them with electric shocks, beat them, and planted weapons on them. Some of the defendants recanted the confessions they made in the days following their arrests. OVD Info has reported on each of the defendants in the case in detail.

Translated by the Russian Reader

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If you have not been following the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case and other recent cases involving frame-ups, torture, and violent intimidation by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and other arms of the Russian police state, read and share the articles I have posted on these subjects.