On October 13, the 1st Eastern District Military Court in Khabarovsk sentenced Chechen Apti Visaev to 17 years in a special regime penal colony for preparing a terrorist attack in Norilsk. The defendant did not admit guilt and stated that the criminal case against him was fabricated by the FSB.
Visaev's case became resonant thanks to the active position of his wife Aisha Mutaeva, who covered the trial in detail on social networks, talking about inconsistencies indicating that the charges were falsified.
Apti Visaev, 37, had previously served 14 years on charges of committing terrorist attacks, illegal arms trafficking, and attempting to kill Russian security officials. In court, he stated that he was forced to sign a confession under torture. After his release, he got a job, married a widow with four children and, according to Igor Dashkuev, an elder of the Chechen community in Norilsk, devoted all his time to work and family. According to Visaev, after his release, FSB officers offered him to become an informant and talk about his fellow countrymen living in the region. Visaev refused.
In April 2020, when he was vacationing with his family in Pyatigorsk, FSB officers detained him on charges of incitement to commit a terrorist attack - he allegedly persuaded his friend Bekkarimov to detonate a bomb during the May 9 parade in Norilsk. Meanwhile, due to COVID restrictions, there were no parades that year. The main evidence for the prosecution was the correspondence on the phone, but the defense's motions for a technical check of the accounts were rejected, and the phone disappeared.
One of the prosecution witnesses, Ibragim Gazarchiev, who had previously stated that he was being pressured to give false testimony against Visaev, hid from giving testimony and left Russia.
During the investigation, Visaev was transferred from the Norilsk pretrial detention center to the Krasnoyarsk one. His wife and children moved to Krasnoyarsk to help him with his defense and attend court hearings. However, in March, Visaev was transferred again, this time to Khabarovsk. His wife had to announce a fundraiser on social networks to pay for the lawyer's flights.
In April, Visaev, through his lawyers, spoke about the torture conditions in which he is being held in the pretrial detention center: a cell for two, 6 square meters, no ventilation. He is not given a blanket, and the mattress is so thin that he sleeps on iron bars. In May, a judge of the 1st Eastern District Military Court in Khabarovsk removed Aisha Mutaeva, who was her husband's public defender, from the court hearing before the verdict. The reason was the video recordings she made in court and published on social networks.
In his final statement, Visaev stated that he was innocent and that the case against him was fabricated: “This is an artificial case - to make statistics for themselves, it was fabricated by FSB officers Alexander Pshenichnikov and Alexander Akhmetov. I don’t know how to create an Instagram, I was very behind the times when I was in prison. I couldn’t write messages because I made a lot of mistakes. I only sent voice messages. When they confiscated my phone in Pyatigorsk, they deleted the Instagram that my wife had installed for me. We proved this, there are documents about this, that the actions with my phone were carried out at a time when it had already been confiscated.”
In addition, he said that Pshenichnikov and Akhmetov visited him in the pretrial detention center several times and offered to give false testimony against his fellow countrymen.
The defense appealed the verdict.
According to Chechen political scientist Ruslan Kutayev, there are signs of discrimination based on nationality in Visayev's case. "This is an outrageously fabricated case, everything is on the surface. Apti Visayev was crushed. It's as if the special services are challenging society, saying, we do what we want, and we don't give a damn about you, we'll make any kind of crude fake and bend you over, and nothing will happen to us for it. Of course, there is discrimination based on nationality here," Kutayev told the publication "Kavkaz.Realii." - According to research by the Assembly of the Peoples of the Caucasus, about 30 thousand innocent Chechens are serving long sentences in Russia - from 15 to 25 years. Up to 30 percent of those who are supposed to be released die: the term ends, and a week or two before release, the person dies. Most likely, they are killed so that they do not go out and testify to the crimes of the security forces."
