On July 11, the Central Court of Omsk placed under house arrest 72-year-old disabled Vladimir Beskhlebny on charges of organizing an extremist community. He denied the collapse of the USSR and was the chairman of the Omsk "Executive Committee of the Council of People's Deputies of the RSFSR"; FSB officers claimed that he was preparing an "armed seizure of power." Five of his associates, as well as two Omsk offices of the movement were searched.
Searches of Beskhlebny took place last week, his close relatives told Novaya Gazeta. At 7 o'clock in the morning, three commandos with machine guns in black uniforms without identification marks, in bulletproof vests, masks, and with them - two men in civilian clothes broke into the apartment where the pensioner lives.
They presented his wife with a search warrant, where it was said that, according to the FSB of Russia in the Omsk Region, he was preparing an "armed seizure of power" in the country. During the search, they seized all office equipment available in the house - a computer, telephones, documents (a Soviet-style passport: the public figure did not change it for a Russian one), "the state seals of the RSFSR and other important state documents."
In the decision of the court, which chose house arrest as a measure of restraint for Beskhlebny, the crime of which he is suspected is formulated differently - “Organization of an extremist community (part 1 of article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). As his comrades-in-arms, members of the Omsk Executive Committee of the Council of People's Deputies, where Vladimir Beskhlebny was appointed “chairman”, told Novaya, the investigation intends to prove that he was preparing a “seizure of power”.
“Major Volkov, the deputy head of the FSB Investigation Department, confidently declared in court:“We will present the evidence base,”says Vladimir Zhigalin, who appears in the investigation’s order as the coordinator of an“extremist organization”in the suburban village of Krasnoyarka. “You saw Vladimir Nikolayevich [Beskhlebny]: he is an invalid, had an accident several years ago, walks with a stick, isn't it funny for our bodies to suspect him of seizing power? Or do they have nothing else to do? " He adds.
The search of Zhigalin's house took place at the same time as that of Beskhlebny. “Two men came in black with machine guns, an FSB officer, a policeman with them, brought two attesting witnesses with them. They frightened my six-year-old grandson, my grandmother - she is 90 years old, a veteran of the rear, has many Soviet letters and awards”.
Another supporter of Beshlebny, Larisa Khrutskaya, said that during the search at 7 am she was already at work: “They called from an unknown number:“Your house is being searched. - What search? My husband is a disabled person of the second group, my daughter is 16 years old, and there are submachine gunners in black masks. She lay for 4 hours, covered herself with a blanket from fear, then she could not recover for a day."
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“I read the first paragraph in the decree - that Beskhlebny is preparing an armed seizure, I did not read this nonsense further,” Khrutskaya continued. - By the way, he is the chairman of not only the executive committee, but also the society "Social Care" in combination.
- I need it to communicate with my family, I have no money to buy a new one. No, they took everything - they threw it into their bags: a computer, flash drives, telephones, housework documents that are not relevant at all."
Searches of the house of Evgeny Myakishev, an Afghan veteran, chairman of the Omsk branch of the "Combat Brotherhood" (in the resolution of the investigation called "Beskhlebny's bodyguard"), Svetlana Krainea, Antonina Zabolotnaya, and also in two executive committee offices located in the city center, were searched in a similar way.
"The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR" published in its printed organ a "protest" against the actions of the security agencies of the Omsk region, which will be "sent to the entire world community."
This is not the first criminal case against opponents of the collapse of the USSR. So, after the Union of Slavic Forces of Russia movement was recognized as extremist last August, in the summer of 2020, cases on the creation of its "branches" were opened in the Tula and Kirov regions. In July, searches of opponents of the collapse of the USSR were carried out in the large city of Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Noyabrsk. In July 2019, members of the Home in the USSR movement from Nizhnevartovsk (Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug) were accused of preparing for an armed seizure of buildings.
