On May 25, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation put an end to the criminal case, which dragged on for more than half a century. Back in 1959, a young resident of Bashkiria, Fathulla Iskhakov, was sentenced to a long term for attempted murder, which he did not commit. After spending decades in litigation with government agencies and courts, the 86-year-old pensioner finally achieved his goal - he was officially found innocent and received the right to full rehabilitation.
RT has repeatedly talked about the Iskhakov case. The crime took place in May 1959 in the village of Bolshiye Karkaly in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. A local resident was attacked at night, during which she received severe cuts.
Awakened relatives were also attacked and injured. The rugged girl ran for help into a neighbor's house where Iskhakov lived, who at that time was already married and raising a child. According to the man, at that moment a few drops of her blood fell on his jacket, which hung next to the door. It was this seemingly insignificant circumstance that eventually became fatal for him.
The investigation soon made him the main suspect. Suddenly, there were witnesses who allegedly saw how a drunken Iskhakov tried to get into the house of neighbors, and among the "eyewitnesses" was a real criminal - Nail Saitbatalov, who at that time was 18 years old.
Despite the fact that the victims did not remember the appearance of the offender and did not testify against Iskhakov, the court found him guilty of attempted murder. A negative role was played by the man's past conviction for theft - he was released early in the summer of 1958.
As a result, Iskhakov was sentenced to 15 years, of which he spent 13 years behind bars. While he was serving his sentence, his wife died.
Nevertheless, the man did not give up. He created a new family, achieved success in the professional field, but all subsequent years did not give up hope for rehabilitation.
Back in 1990, he was able to achieve the resumption of proceedings in his case, but three years later it was terminated without any significant results. Nevertheless, it was possible to establish that the injuries of the victims could not be considered serious harm to health, as they were interpreted by the court at one time. In addition, it turned out that the cuts were not inflicted with an ax, but with a blade.
A radical turn in the case occurred in 2013, when Iskhakov received a letter from Nail Saitbatalov. A man who lived almost all his life in Mordovia, who was tortured by his conscience, decided to apologize to his former neighbor and admitted that it was he who attacked the girl and her family.
Saitbatalov managed to testify to investigators from Bashkiria, a few months after that he died.
Despite such a radical turn in the case and the decision of the investigator of the Investigative Committee, who, after a new investigation, came to the conclusion that Iskhakov was a victim of perjury, it took him another ten years to legally formalize his own innocence.
- Fathulla Iskhakov outside the building of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on May 25, 2023 with one of his lawyers
- © From the personal archive of Vitaly Burkin
For a long time, Iskhakov's rehabilitation, he said, was hampered by the local prosecutor's office, which did not want to revise such a long-standing sentence. Due to disagreement with her position in 2019, the pensioner even went on a hunger strike outside the building of the supervisory authority.
In December 2021, the man seemed to have reached the finish line: one of the highest courts in the country, the Constitutional Court, sided with him. It ruled that there were grounds for reviewing the verdict on the basis of newly discovered circumstances in the Iskhakov case.
However, in July 2022, the Sixth Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction still found no grounds for canceling the verdict, considering the new invoice in the case collected by the investigation to be insufficient.
But the stubborn pensioner, who declared that he would not die until he achieved full rehabilitation, did not give up. He filed a complaint with the Supreme Court, which on May 25 nevertheless overturned the verdict for someone else's crime 64 years ago, as well as several subsequent court decisions made not in favor of Iskhakov.
"We did the incredible. First of all, they helped a man who had been working all his long life to restore his good name. And secondly, for the first time in the country, such a long-standing sentence was canceled due to newly discovered circumstances. We have created a law enforcement practice, "Vitaly Burkin, one of the pensioner's defenders, commented on the court's verdict to RT.
He noted that his client received the right to rehabilitation, which implies the recovery of moral damage for illegal criminal prosecution. However, Burkin is not sure that Iskhakov will take advantage of it.
"For him, of course, this is not the main thing. I don't know yet what he will decide, but he is not a selfish person at all. It was important for him to clear his good name, and this goal was finally achieved," the lawyer said. - We don't fully understand why we had to spend so much time and effort. Moreover, it was not some high-ranking officials who interfered - even by regional standards, they were middle-level people. But it's good that the Supreme Court put an end to this case."