Astrakhan residents accused of theft complain about torture and disregard of their alibis

Yuri Modebadze, Chairman of the Board of the Astrakhan organization of Georgian culture "Iveriya", and Sergey Zaplavsky, a resident of Astrakhan, have been kept in custody for a year on the charge of a large-scale theft. Both defendants claim to have alibis, which the investigators and the court ignore. Besides, Sergey Zaplavsky has claimed being tortured after his detention.

The criminal case is being considered at the Narimanov District Court of the Astrakhan Region, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports. According to the investigators, on June 16, 2015, Sergey Zaplavsky and Yuri Modebadze stole 1,065,000 roubles from a car belonging to A. Magomedgadjiev, a victim.

Initially, the victim claimed that one million roubles was stole from him; however, two months later, he remembered that he also had in his car the amount of 65,000 roubles belonging to other people. Meanwhile, according to the case materials, the car bore no signs of forced entry.

The defence treats the testimony of the victim as untrue, reports advocate Oksana Ufalova. According to the defence, Yuri Modebadze has an alibi: at the same hour, he was shot by cameras of the road police (known as GIBDD) when he was driving a car, and his wife was together with him.

The case contains a lot of contradictions, which the investigators could not exclude; however, the court refused to question the investigator, reports advocate Elena Lyapaeva. According to her, the court does not motivate its decisions.

Sergey Zaplavsky believes that the investigators, the prosecutor, and the court violated "all laws and regulations, both legal and common for all human beings."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.