The FSB has opened a criminal investigation against members of the “Moscow cell” of the Set* community. On this subject informed TASS, citing a law enforcement source.
According to the agency’s interlocutor, FSB agents carried out searches on February 27 at the addresses of anarchists and their relatives.
A TASS source says some of the previously convicted defendants in the Network* case, who were transferred to Moscow’s Lefortovo remand center, have confessed. They reportedly named a graduate student from Moscow State University, Azat Miftakhov, as one of the participants in the “metropolitan cell”.
The telegram channel dedicated to Miftakhov claimed that the FSB would like to make the graduate student a defendant in the criminal case of the Network*. There, in particular, we are talking about Igor Shishkin, convicted in the “Network” case, who testified against other defendants. In August 2021, after leaving the colony, Shishkin left Russia and said that when he was arrested in 2018 he testified under torture.
Miftakhov’s lawyer, Svetlana Sidorkina, told Mediazona** that searches took place on the morning of February 27 at the homes of people “considered anarchists by conviction”. The graduate student’s next of kin have not been searched. “We are talking about the presence of an alleged Moscow cell (“Network”) * and in a way it has to do with Azat, although I think Azat has nothing to do with it “, said the lawyer.
In January 2021, Azat Miftakhov was sentenced to six years in prison. The investigation claimed that in 2018, three anarchists smashed the window of the United Russia office in the Moscow neighborhood of Khovrino and threw a smoke bomb inside. Miftakhov, according to investigators, stood nearby and observed the situation. Miftakhov has pleaded not guilty and believes the criminal case is related to his political views.
The Network* case was initiated in October 2017. In a few months, 11 people were arrested in Penza and Saint Petersburg, accused of creating a terrorist community. According to investigators, during the presidential elections and the World Cup, members of the Network * planned to organize a series of terrorist attacks in Russia, raise an armed rebellion and overthrow the government.
In February 2020, the Volga District Military Court in Penza sentenced seven defendants in the case to terms ranging from six to 18 years in prison. Dmitry Pchelintsev (18 years of strict regime), Ilya Shakursky (16 years of strict regime), Andrey Chernov (14 years of strict regime), Maxim Ivankin (13 years of strict regime) received the longest sentences. Pchelintsev, Chernov, Shakursky and two other defendants in the case, Viktor Filinkov and Arman Sagynbaev, said they confessed under torture.
* the organization is recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia
** the publication is registered by the Ministry of Justice of Russia in the register of foreign agents
