On August 4, 2019, a seven-year-old girl was raped in the Udmurt town of Glazov. According to the UK, a local resident abused the child. Previously, he was repeatedly tried, and in the 1990s sentenced to death. In 1998, he was pardoned, the execution was replaced by 25 years in prison, and in 2016 he was released on parole. Later, representatives of the FSIN stated that they opposed his parole. Meanwhile, as RT found out, at least 50 former "suicide bombers" are now at large.

Executions and pardons

The last death sentence in Russia was carried out on August 2, 1996. That day, the maniac Sergei Golovkin was shot dead in Butyrka, who killed and raped at least 11 teenagers. Less than a year later, in April 1997, Russia signed Protocol No. 6 to the "Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms", abolishing the death penalty. Despite the fact that the Russian Federation has not ratified the treaty, it complies with its provisions. After that, the Russian courts sentenced the criminals to execution for about three years, but the executions were no longer carried out.

So, according to the judicial department under the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, in 1997, 106 people were sentenced to death, in 1998 - 116, in 1999 - 18. The department announced to RT that they did not have information about sentences handed down before 1997.

In turn, the Russian media in publications on the introduction of a moratorium on the death penalty, noted that from 1992 to 1999, 894 people were sentenced to an exceptional measure of punishment. Of these, 163 were shot from 1992 to 1996.

At the same time, Russian lawyer, professor, Doctor of Law Igor Petrukhin in his work “The Right to Life and the Death Penalty” pointed out that 131 people were executed from 1992 to 1996, 53 of them in the first half of 1996. During the same period, 334 people were pardoned.

The official date when no one was sentenced to death was considered on June 3, 1999, when 703 convicts awaiting the death penalty were pardoned by a presidential decree. Most of them were sentenced to life imprisonment, the rest - to 25 years. Among the pardons were those who were sentenced to capital punishment by the Soviet courts.

“In 1987, the only institution in the USSR where prisoners were held who were sentenced to a death sentence was a correctional institution located in the Sverdlovsk Region. At present, it continues to be the only institution where convicts serve their sentences, to whom the death penalty by means of pardon has been replaced by 25 years in prison. Now there are 70 such convicts, ”said the head of the Department for the Execution of Sentences and Special Accounts of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, Major General of the Internal Service Igor Vedinyapin in an interview with TASS in 2018.

Supervised

The interview was about IK-56 "Black Golden Eagle" for especially dangerous criminals, located in the village of Lozvinsky, Ivdelsky District, Sverdlovsk Region. The colony got its informal name because of the concrete sculpture near the administrative building: a black golden eagle holds in its claws the head of a defeated serpent.

Now, according to media reports, there are no convicts in the "Black Golden Eagle". The colony will soon be liquidated, and prisoners have already been transferred to other regions.

RT sent an official request to the Federal Penitentiary Service to find out how many prisoners who had the death penalty replaced by a prison term were released from the Black Golden Eagle and other colonies. However, the FSIN could not provide this information. The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation did not respond to the request.

At the same time, the database of the Ivdelsky district court contains information on 16 persons sentenced to death who, in 2017-2018, the court appointed administrative supervision before being released from the colony. About 40 more “suicide bombers” in 2012–2018 were transferred from the Black Golden Eagle to other regions, and local courts made decisions on administrative supervision.

As a rule, all former prisoners under the supervision of the death penalty are forbidden to travel outside the region without permission and to drink alcohol. They are obliged to be at home from 22:00 to 7:00, and at least once a month to be noted at the precinct. Prisoners for sexual offenses against minors are prohibited from approaching kindergartens and schools.

These requirements are not always followed. The court database “GAS Justice” contains information on several administrative cases regarding released “suicide bombers” who violated the conditions of supervision. The most common misconduct is drinking alcohol in public places.

In addition, some of the ex-prisoners do not have their own home, so sometimes the supervision order is fictitious. So, in July 2019, Yuri Tugbaev was released from Altai colony No. 8. In 1995, he was sentenced to death for murder. In 1998, he was replaced by 25 years of imprisonment. Before the release, according to the court, it turned out that the man did not have his own home. He stated that he intends to settle with his daughter in the Tambov region, but the man never appeared there. This information was confirmed by RT local precinct and the head of the village administration, where Tugbaev was supposed to live.

How many “ex-suicide bombers” are currently on administrative records, law enforcement agencies do not advertise. “We inform you that we do not have informational and reference materials on the number of persons to whom the death penalty has been commuted as a pardon by imprisonment for a certain term, including those released from correctional facilities,” the RT told the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Relapse after release

Meanwhile, some of the pardoned "suicide bombers" have already managed to commit new crimes. For example, Vladimir Plastinin is already serving his fifth term. He was one of the first prisoners sentenced to death who managed to free himself from the "Black Golden Eagle" according to parole.

He was sentenced to death for murder, car theft and theft. In 1994, the decree of President Plastinin was replaced by the execution of 15 years in prison. In 2002, Plastinin was released on parole - the colony administration gave him a positive description. However, a year later he sat down for 10 years for causing grievous bodily harm and car theft. After serving his term, Plastinin did not go for long - he again stole a car. True, this time he was lucky - came under an amnesty in honor of the 70th anniversary of the Victory. After the amnesty, Plastinin once again sat for causing minor bodily harm, and now he is serving a four-year sentence for theft.

Sergey Khokhlov was serving a term in Black Eagle. On April 14, 1995, a military court of the Volga Military District sentenced him to death for robbery by a group of people using weapons, intentional murder out of mercenary motives with particular cruelty, associated with rape. In 1999, the decree of President Khokhlov replaced the execution of 25 years in a special regime colony. In October 2017, the man returned to his hometown of Orsk, and a year later he was again imprisoned.

As follows from the materials of the October district court of the city of Orsk, after the release of Khokhlov met a woman who had a child from her first marriage. However, their joint life did not work out. They often scandalized: the former convict was jealous of the cohabitant. During the next scandal, Khokhlov took out a folding knife and hit a woman on the cheek with it. To the noise from her room her minor son jumped out and promised to call the police. After that, a man distraught with jealousy and vodka several times stabbed the teenager in the chest with a knife. Later, realizing what he had done, Khokhlov fled to the pharmacy, but he forbade the ambulance to call the victims.

A few days later, the son of cohabitant Khokhlova went to his father. He saw wounds on the boy’s body and contacted the police.

On July 17, 2018, Khokhlov was sentenced to six years in maximum security. In court, his roommate explained that she did not contact the police not only because of fear, but also because of pity.

“He spent almost his entire conscious life in prison, that is, he is completely unsuitable for our life, everything is out of the ordinary for him,” she said in court. Khokhlova herself was described as a calm and balanced person, "however, if you start arguing with him, then he begins to shout, to be indignant."

Lack of socialization

Marat Amanliev, president of the Collective Defense NGO, told RT that it’s hard for people who have been in prison for long periods to socialize.

“A person has served, for example, 20 years in prison, and the likelihood that he is adapting to modern life is extremely small. Because 20 years is a rather long period, it can be considered a whole era: he could sit in one country and go to another. On the other hand, even with short deadlines, people do not adapt freely, since the necessary work is not carried out. Psychologists can talk with them, but just for show. All these mechanisms formally exist by law, but do not work, ”Amanliev said.

According to him, people who have been in prison often come out embittered because they are being bullied in the colony. Therefore, it is not necessary to expect that they, having gotten from that environment to new conditions, will quickly get used to them.

“It is impossible to say now that people who have been released are not socializing and that is their fault. First of all, the state should create effective mechanisms for this, and if it really does not work out, then only then it will be possible to say that yes, it’s somehow not like that, ”Amanliev concluded.

However, human rights activist Andrei Babushkin believes that the likelihood of a relapse among former "suicide bombers" is greatly exaggerated.

“I have been working with such prisoners for 30 years and I personally know 18 prisoners who were sentenced to death and are now free. These are people who are now working, taking care of their family. Most of the people around them do not know that they have ever been in prison. I have not heard about cases of repeated crimes, ”a human rights activist told RT.

Waiting for freedom

Mikhail Gusev is looking forward to the end of his term. In 1997, he was sentenced to death for robbery and murder. In 1999, after a pardon, the death penalty was changed to 25 years in prison. He spent more than half of this period in the "Black Golden Eagle", and in 2012 he was transferred to the Ryazan region. There, a former "suicide bomber" filed a petition for parole every six months, but he was refused. Only in August last year, Gusev managed to convince the court to replace him with the remaining term of forced labor.

“Gusev in the wild is waiting for his wife and children. In the colony, he was characterized positively. During the time of serving the sentence, he paid the material damage to the victims. From 2003 to 2019, he received 49 rewards, became the laureate of the 1st prize of the All-Russian competition of Orthodox icon painting “Canon”, and even saved a man during the fire in the colony, but the court did not give him parole, ”says Gusev’s lawyer RT Roman Oreshkin.

According to him, the replacement of Gusev’s unexpired term with forced labor - and he only had to sit for a year, until December 2020 - can be considered a victory. “They still try not to release this category of prisoners on parole,” explains Oreshkin. “In my practice, this is the first case.”

However, most of those sentenced to death in the 1990s are unlikely to be released. The executions were replaced by life imprisonment. As RT wrote earlier, during the entire existence of this type of punishment, only six people were able to get out of the colony for life prisoners. All of them managed through the court to achieve the annulment of the sentence and the replacement of the life term with a specific one.

So, the first to be released back in 2006 was Alexander Biryukov, a native of Saratov, later Alexander Shchegolev, a native of the Amur Region, Vladimir Dorokhin, Krasnodar, Vladimir Pakhomov, a resident of Krasnoyarsk, Anvar Masalimov, Ufa, and Alexey Bykov, Perm.

However, most of the former prisoners did not manage to start life in the wild. Alexander Biryukov and Vladimir Pakhomov died. Shchegolev, Dorokhin and Masalimov were again in the dock, as soon as Bykov managed to get a family. In his village, he works as a driver.