Lawyers discontented with charges against three Kuban pensioners

Activists sent money and postcards to the arrested pensioners accused of creating an illegal armed formation. The group of three pensioners does not meet the definition of an illegal armed formation (IAF), lawyers point out.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that pensioners Nikolai Nabiev, Sergey Kuzovenko, and Marina Zakharova were accused of creating an armed grouping and storing firearms. According to the source’s information, the criminal case was fabricated and built “on provocations” by FSB agents who bought alcoholic beverages and were filming the two pensioners during feasts during a year.

The pensioners have been kept in a SIZO (pre-trial prison) for more than two years. The defendants do not admit guilt, stating that they were trying to fight corruption in government agencies.

Marina Melikhova, a former lawyer of the regional bar association, who was deprived of her lawyer status in 2019, met the arrested pensioners when she was under investigation. Marina Melikhova believes that the defendants did not commit the crime due to lack of motivation, their age, and poor health.

The former lawyer suggests that the charge is "absurd", since a group of three pensioners does not meet the definition of “illegal armed formation.”

“How could two disabled pensioners, one of whom can barely move on crutches, another suffers from lung problems, constantly suffocating, and an elderly pensioner with kidney disease, who worked all her life as a nurse, organize all that?" Marina Melikhova expressed her indignation.

One of the defendants’ advocates adds that the case contains “nothing secret that could harm the state,” except for the names of the FSB agents who “for a long time provoked the pensioners to commit a crime planned by investigators, which never happened.”