Yesterday, the FSB, the Interior Ministry and the Investigative Committee announced the arrest of the well-known Chechen poet and blogger Shamil Arbinin (pictured), who was presented as «a member of Basayev’s gang, involved in the attack on the Pskov paratroopers in 2000. And this arrest should be understood in the context of the unfolding processes in Russia.
As for the Investigative Committee of Russia (SKR), it has recently been actively promoting itself as an organization fighting for the restoration of historical justice from a position of patriotism. In particular, criminal cases have been opened against real or perceived Nazi criminals and crimes committed against Soviet citizens during World War II. And this week, the head of the SKR, Alexander Bastrykin, once again loudly declared that all Nazi criminals must be found and punished. As part of this campaign, the SKR is now initiating cases in which most of the people involved are deceased, and in some cases they are trying to extradite centenarians who are living out their days somewhere. This in itself raises ambiguous attitudes, but in principle it could be understood and even supported — the Israelis are doing the same with those who destroyed the Jews, prosecuting them without a statute of limitations, so why shouldn’t the peoples of the former USSR do the same?
There is one caveat, however. While seeking revenge for long-dead enemies of the Jews, the Israelis primarily protect living Jews and their rights. Yes, while disregarding the rights of Muslims and Arabs, but no one really expects them to do otherwise. They protect the interests of their own people not only in the past but also in the present. This cannot be said of the SKR, which is leading this ostentatious campaign. For example, by investigating crimes committed against Soviet citizens eighty years ago, the SKR is effectively covering up crimes committed against Russian citizens today.
This can be said about its refusal to open a criminal case into the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, even though it has already been proven (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=39400). It can be said about the case of our brother Timur Kuashev, where the SKR effectively covered up a blatant murder by taking control of the investigation (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=28722). Meanwhile, Kuashev’s murder was effectively investigated as part of an independent investigation into the attempted assassination of Navalny, which revealed links to all of these and many other political murders (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=39527). As a result of this investigation, it became clear that there are structures within the security forces that are systematically involved in extrajudicial executions not only of Russian citizens, but also of well-known Russian citizens such as politicians, human rights defenders, journalists, etc. However, the SKR refuses to investigate these murders and activities, thus becoming an accomplice.
The same is true for the murder of our brother Orkhan Dzhemal and his journalist colleagues in the Central African Republic. It was also effectively investigated (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=36931), but Igor Krasnov, a colleague of Bastrykin who was promoted from his subordinate position to the position of Prosecutor General, covered up this crime — a premeditated murder of well-known Russian journalists (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=37925).
In this situation, the SKR’s show campaign to bring to justice real or perceived (as in the case of Arbinin) war criminals from past wars evokes nothing but disgust. In this particular situation, however, another entity (or rather, group of individuals) was involved — the FSB. And it must be said that Arbinin’s high-profile arrest took place against the backdrop of Ramzan Kadyrov’s direct accusation that this agency was monitoring his enemies, namely «Novaya Gazeta» (https://youtu.be/0ItKWFS6ThA).
In this case, a Chechen poet who openly expressed himself in the Chechen Republic was arrested, which could only have happened with the knowledge of its authorities. Moreover, he had already been granted an amnesty for his participation in «illegal armed formations» in 2000. Now it turns out that the FSB is reopening cases from twenty years ago, clearly throwing stones into Ramzan Kadyrov’s garden — suggesting that his power covers terrorists. And this means that tomorrow they could also arrest Timur Mutsuraev, and then implicate prominent functionaries of Ramzan Kadyrov’s system, who never really hid the fact that they were fighting against the Kremlin, but later changed sides.
By the way, this is happening not only in the Chechen and Muslim direction, but also in the opposite direction. For example, in September 2020, a former neo-Nazi Maxim Martsinkevich, known by the nickname Tesak, was tortured to death in one of the prisons. A few months before his release, it was decided to charge him with racist murders committed in Moscow in the early 2000s. It is difficult to say who committed these murders, especially considering that the confessions were clearly obtained under torture. But another pattern is typical — those defendants in these cases who agreed to cooperate with the special services got away with it, while those who were involved in opposition activities or inclined to them, having changed their views long ago, were tried for crimes committed twenty years ago.
In general, it is safe to say that if anyone should fear the «struggle for historical justice» initiated by the Russian security forces, it is the Russians themselves. Fortunately, as part of this witch hunt, the security forces will have the opportunity to prosecute individuals not only for comments and posts on social media in the recent past, but also for crimes attributed to them without a statute of limitations on the basis of forced confessions.