Relatives of three Kuban pensioners doubt investigators' version about created IAF

Marina Zakharova, 68, Nikolai Nabiev, 66, and Sergey Kuzovenko, 64, from Kuban (the Krasnodar Territory) have civilian professions; and the investigators' version that they had tried to organize an illegal armed formation (IAF) looks absurd. The embedded law enforcers persuaded one of the pensioners to sell a faulty pistol, and then falsified a criminal case, pensioners' relatives assert.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the case of the above Zakharova, Nabiev and Kuzovenko, accused of creating an IAF and storing weapons, is being considered by the Uspensky District Court of the Krasnodar Territory. The pensioners have been kept at the SIZO (pre-trial prison) for more than two years; they refuse to plead guilty, stating that they were trying to fight corruption in government bodies.

Nikolai Nabiev is a wonderful family man and person; he never broke the law and worked for the good of the Motherland and his family in the most difficult jobs, his daughter Alevtina has stated.

"How could he turn into a terrorist from a person of a peaceful profession, a tractor driver? He is disabled and has had problems with his legs since his youth after an accident; and he barely moves on crutches," she has added, stressing that she may never see her father again, since he receives no proper treatment in custody.

Maria Zakharova is a decent and law-abiding person, said her friend Galina. She is shocked that Zakharova was accused of organizing an IAF.

"Marina is a pensioner with health problems."I've never heard any criminal words or calls against authorities from her," Galina has stated.

Marina Melikhova ended up in a cell with Marina Zakharova. She believes that Zakharova's case is falsified. "The advanced age of the defendants and the state of their physical health – two disabled people and one woman who looks like a 'dandelion' – can't fit into the mind of a normal, sane person about the real possibility of creating such an IAF," Melikhova has noted.

She said that FSB officers introduced two agents the pensioners, and for almost two years they could not obtain evidence of their guilt, after which they began provoking them to commit crimes. One of the pensioners told a law enforcer that in the 1990s he bought an old, faulty pistol and showed it to him. Law enforcers began persuading him to sell this pistol and exchange it for a more modern one, citing the fact that now everyone needs self-defence. The pensioner agreed, and then falsifications began, and records allegedly about 'arming the IAF'."

"They collectively fought against corruption in the housing and utilities sector and the installation of communication towers near their homes in a peaceful way, and that's all they are 'guilty of'," Ms Melikhova has emphasized.