Picture of Timur Kacharava at a memorial held at the scene of his murder on November 17, 2015. Photograph by David Frenkel. Courtesy of the Russian Reader

Man Accused of Murdering Antifascist Timur Kacharava Detained in Petersburg Twelve Years Later

Fontanka.ru

February 22, 2018

Alexander Zenin, the alleged organizer of an attack on antifascists on Ligovsky Prospect in 2005, was detained in the village of Pesochny yesterday evening.

According to Fontanka.ru’s sources, CID officers from Petersburg police headquarters found Zenin at 7:00 p.m., February 21, 2018, outside the house at 61 Proletarskaya Street in the village of Pesochny. The Interiory Ministry’s Petersburg Central District Office had put him on the wanted list a year after Timur Kacharava (1985–2005) was murdered and his university classmate Maxim Zgibay was assaulted. Zenin was arrested in absentia for murder and incitement of hatred and enmity.

The 33-year-old Petersburg had lived all this time without registering his residence. He was detained in an area of single-storey private houses on the outskirts of Petersburg.

The Investigative Committee considers Zenin the organizer of the November 13, 2005, attack on the antifascists, who were holding a rally on Ligovsky Prospect.* Zenin allegedly drew up the plan for the attack, during which Kacharava was stabbed six times in the neck, dying immediately at the scene. Zgibay managed to escape into the nearby Bukvoyed bookstore, but he had been wounded in the head and chest and was taken to hospital in serious condition.

Zenin is considered the last of the defendants in the case. All nine of his accomplices, seven of whom were under eighteen years of age at the time, were arrested in December 2005. Alexander Shabalin was sentenced to twelve years in a penal colony after the court ruled it was he who had stabbed Kacharava in the neck. The remaining defendants were sentenced to terms in prison ranging from two to twelve years.

* This is an outright falsehood. Kacharava, Zgibay, and their comrades had earlier in the day taken part in a Food Not Bombs event on Vladimirskaya Square, situated many blocks away from the murder scene. In any case, Kacharava and his friends did not hold a rally on Ligovsky Prospect on November 13, 2005. This is common knowledge, as are all the other details of Kacharava’s gruesome murder and the events preceding and following it. TRR

Thanks to Comrade DE for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader. See my previous postings on the Kacharava case and its afterlife in the archives of this website and Chtodelat News.