Sentenced to three years of detention and detained in a prison in Bashkiria (450049, Ufa, Novozhenova Street, 86 "А", 394/9) to the moment of this book’s writing Maxim Gromov has already spent 125 days in an isolation cell. I remind that this was the same Maxim Gromov who has thrown president Putin’s portrait on the street from the office of minister Zurabov in the health ministry on August 2nd 2004. Caught by camera lenses, the flying portrait has made the news not only in Russia but in the world press as well. Now Gromov is punished for this, left to rot in the hole. He cannot meet his relatives and parcels with food (or other) are not allowed. FSB officers enter and leave the prison like their home, interrogate and intimidate Gromov. We know extremely little about his state of health. We only know that they want to detain him in a camp prison, the so-called PKT – covered location. The name speaks for itself: in a PKT the person is totally isolated from the world, in other words, it is in realty a strict prison detention. They are also trying to add another prison term to Gromov. He does not send or receive mail; there is no communication whatsoever. All that we know about Gromov was obtained literally bit by bit. At the same time the three National-Bolsheviks who were sentenced on “the health ministry case” to two and a half years each, have already served half of their time. In order to receive the possibility to try to leave prison before term on probation they have to pay a civil action from the health ministry of 147 thousand rubles. The party is ready to pay that action, but when our lawyers demanded the health ministry to give them the number of the accounts, where we could send the money, the representatives of the ministry told us that they refuse the money. Oh no, it is not a generous gesture of the ministry’s functionaries, but another evil deed. The problem is that the seven arrested for the August 2nd action will not be able to leave prison on probation if they do not pay the action and will have to serve the whole term. As we see, meanness is a widespread quality among the Russian functionaries.
By the way, the Tverskoy court composed of the judge E. Stashina, S. Ukhnaleva and D. Popov have directly recognized that the defendants were political prisoners in their verdict. I will allow myself to cite the verdict:
“They have committed the crimes in the following circumstances. In relation to the discussion of legislation about the reformation (monetization) of benefits in the State Duma of the Russian Federation, ‘leaders’ of the informal association ‘National-Bolshevik Party’ (NBP) non established by the investigation, under the pretext of protesting against the carrying out of the social reforms and the cancellation of the benefits in the end of July – beginning of August 2004, have decided to gather the members of their informal association residing in different regions of the Russian Federation in order to carry out, on August 2nd 2004, an unsanctioned meeting in front of the Ministry of health and social development of the Russian Federation situated at: Moscow, Neglinnaya Street, 25. With the goal of flagrant disturbance of the public order and the destabilization of a State institution’s functioning, the ‘leaders’ have also developed a plan, distributing the roles between the members of the informal association ‘National-Bolshevik Party’ (NBP) in their illegal penetration in the administrative building of the RF Ministry of health and social development during the above-mentioned unsanctioned meeting.” Etc. The entire verdict is a sample of lies. It turns out that the nazbols made the run over the ministry for the pleasure of disturbing the order. It is not surprising that after the trial the prosecutor S. A. Tsirkun became hysterical near the courtroom and squealed to the parents of the convicted: “I hate you, damned communists! You butchered my grand father…”
As for Mikhail Trepashkin, the authorities persecute him exclusively because he rebelled against the system, part of which he was for a long time. Former FSB investigator, then investigator of the tax police, on November 15th 1998 he took part in the much-talked-of press conference of FSB officers. On the press conference six officers (a colonel, two lieutenant colonels, two majors and a senior lieutenant) have told that the FSB has a department called URPO whose work consists of extrajudicial reprisals, murders and kidnappings. They have given precise examples, when, whom and what. A special State Duma commission was created then to investigate, but the commission has not even called one of the officers. Since then Trepashkin is persecuted and arrested, just as another officer – Alexander Litvinenko (to whom the URPO commander Kamyshnikov ordered to kill Berezovsky: “You know Berezovsky, so you’ll kill him”), forced to escape from Russia after a few arrests. Subsequently Trepashkin was shortly the lawyer of the residents of the ill-fated house in Ryazan, where FSB “exercises” were taking place, very similar to the preparation of a bombing. (Even before the press conference, when he still was an FSB officer, the unaccommodating and honest Trepashkin was investigating the circumstances surrounding an arms delivery from Russia to Chechnya and discovered that Russian generals were behind that.) After the conference Trepashkin was arrested several times. From 2002 he is detained in the Lefortovo prison under investigation. On May 19th 2004 he was sentenced to four years of detention on charges of disclosure of a State secret (article 283 of the criminal code). On August 19th 2005 Nizhny Tagil’s Tagilostroevsky district court has satisfied Trepashkin’s appeal about a release on probation. On August 29th Trepashkin was released. On September 18th 2005 Trepashkin was arrested again and sent to prison IK-13 of Nizhny Tagil. He is really “only punished for his independent behavior”.
On December 14th 2004 the 39 nazbols – authors of the leaflet “We don’t need such a president!” became political prisoners and are detained under trial on the moment that I am writing these lines. (Actually, at first, they were forty people, however, after they kept him a month in jail, the authorities finally released the youngest – the fifteen-years-old Petrov.) Among them there are nine girls and seven minors; the criminal case Number 300188 was opened against them. Here are the names of the heroes, according to their prison:
In the Butyrka prison (127055, Moscow, Novoslobodskaya Street, 45, IZ-77/2) are detained: Vladimir Angirov, Semen Vyatkin, Ilya Guryev, Alexey Devyatkin, Ivan Drozdov, Alexey Zentsov, Ivan Korolev, Vladimir Lind, Egor Merkushev, Sergey Reznichenko, Sergey Ryzhikov, Dmitry Sevastyanov, Yury Staroverov and Maxim Fedorovykh.
In the Presnenskaya prison (123308, Moscow, 1st Silikatny Street, 11, 1, IZ-77/3) are detained: Yury Bednov, Damir Valeyev, Mikhail Gangan, Andrey Gorin, Alexey Kolunov, Evgeny Korolev, Denis Kumirov, Kirill Manulin, Denis Osnach, Artem Perepelkin, Julian Ryabtsev, Alexey Tonkikh and Vladimir Tyurin.
In the prison for minors (125130, Moscow, Vyborgskaya Street, 20, IZ-77/5) are detained: Maxim Baganov, Alexey Rozhin and Alexey Solovyev.
In the women’s prison (109383, Moscow, Shosseynaya Street, 92, IZ-77/6) are detained: Lira Guskova, Valentina Dolgova, Marina Kurasova, Ekaterina Kurnosova, Alina Lebedeva, Elena Mironycheva, Anna Nazarova, Evgenya Taranenko and Natalya Chernova.