A resident of Pyatigorsk, Alena Popova, who was sentenced in December 2019 by the Tuapse District Court to eight years in prison for the murder of her friend Anastasia Muzheni, considers the court decision unlawful and the court biased. Popova, who is in pre-trial detention center No. 1 of Krasnodar, commented on the court’s decision on RT - her parents told her questions when they visited the girl in the isolation ward.

“Judging by the judge’s behavior throughout the trial, I did not expect the verdict to be acquittal,” Popova said. “The court did not examine the evidence of my innocence, nobody checked anything.”

The trial was held behind closed doors at the request of the relatives of the deceased. According to Popova, the closed examination of her case affected the objectivity of the sentence.

“If the process were public, many inconsistencies of the prosecution would have been opened immediately,” Popova is sure. “I completely lost faith in the honesty of the court.”

From the moment of her arrest, the girl spent 2.5 years in jail. According to her, she endures the conclusion heavily.

“Now I feel depressed and can hardly make social connections. I became isolated and lost the habit of communicating with new people, ”says Popova.

As RT reported, earlier Popov was visited in jail by representatives of the Public Supervisory Commission of the Krasnodar Territory. Popova complained to human rights defenders about her state of health and untimely provision of medical care. The head of the medical service of pre-trial detention center No. 1 in the presence of members of the commission promised to rectify the situation. Popova had no complaints about the general conditions of detention, her cellmates or the staff of the detention center.

Circumstantial evidence

Recall that the mysterious murder of 20-year-old Anastasia Muzheni on a wild rocky beach near the village of Novomikhailovsky, near Tuapse, occurred in August 2017. Her body was found by visitors to the beach under the canopy of a ruined tourist tent. The only suspect was Popova, with whom they rested in Tuapse. On the night when the murder occurred, the girls quarreled, and Popova, according to her, left on her way home to Pyatigorsk. Husband was left on a deserted beach alone.

One of the key evidence for the killings is the time of death - neither the investigation nor the court could establish.

According to law enforcers, during the conflict, Popova inflicted a dull head injury on an unknown subject, from which Muzhenya died between 01:00 and 02:30. However, not one of the examinations conducted has confirmed this fact. At the same time, during the judicial investigation, the defense proved that, according to the examinations and conclusions available in the case file, Muzhenya died no earlier than 09:30, when Popova was already at the entrance to Pyatigorsk.

In addition, the investigation did not check the alibi of local residents who were witnesses in the case - some of them knew where the girls' tent was.

The investigation of the case received a wide public outcry. The Popova case was discussed on the air of federal television channels. All key witnesses, relatives of both girls, lawyers and experts took part in the programs. Entire communities began to appear in social networks dedicated to the secret of the murder of a girl on the beach and the mixed evidence of Popova’s guilt.

Throughout the investigation and trial, Popova denied the charge.

They did not comment on the investigation in the UK, explaining that the investigator Philippe Shevrikuko had forgotten his circumstances and for this reason could not answer RT's questions. According to a source close to the investigation, the state prosecutor admitted during the debate in court that all the evidence against the girl was "indirect in nature."

According to the lawyer of Popova Olga Desyatova, a guilty verdict cannot be imposed solely on the basis of indirect evidence. “In this process, the presumption of innocence is violated. The prosecutor proves guilt, and not the defense proves innocence, this is a fundamental point. Based on the 49th article of the Constitution, all fatal doubts are interpreted in favor of the accused. However, this has not been done. Not to mention the distortion of evidence and the inability to properly cover the process in the media, ”Desyatova said in an interview with RT.

Popova’s defense has already filed an appeal, but it has not yet been considered.