Write letters to anarchist and anti-fascist prisoners of Moscow!

Kharchenko Igor Olegovich
FKU SIZO-2 UFSIN Rossii po g. Moskve
ul. Novoslobodskaya d. 45
127055 Moskva Russia

Igor was arrested in September 2011. He is accused of having participated in a fight on the 4th of July 2010, during which the audience of a punk hardcore concert dispersed a band of nationalists, who had come in order to kill and maim concert guests.

Igor, however, did not take part in the fight – plenty of those present at the concert have given testimony, that during the fight Igor was performing in the concert. The whole case against Igor relies exclusively on the testimony of failed “race warriors”, V. Sumin and V. Zhidousouv.

The true reason for the arrest of Kharchenko is an attempt by Moscow investigators to take revenge on their failure to jail anyone for the action by anti-fascists against the Khimki city administration on the 28th of July 2010.

Igor’s co-accused is Denis Solopov, one of the “Khimki hostages”, who has received refugee status in Western Europe after UNCHR recognised, that the police investigation on the Khimki case was carried out with various violations,  for example confessions gained through use of torture.

Moscow investigators ignored the fact, that during this fight Solopov was in Turkey, which is confirmed by the stamps in his passport, and plenty of eye-witnesses.

The investigation also attempts to indict Kharchenko for “organising of an extremist community,” according to statute 282.1 of the Russian criminal codex.

More on the case against Kharchenko:
http://avtonom.org/en/people/igor-kharchenko

Butyrka prison has also a form, which you may use in order to send letters:
http://wr1.fsin-service.ru/Letter-Client/main.html#new_letter
However, this form is only in Russian and paying for the service (minimal payment is around 1.20 euros) requires either a Russian bank account or account in some internet payment system, common in Russia (such as yandex.dengi or webmoney). In form, you must indicate year of birth of Kharchenkio – 1991.

Sutuga Alexey Vladimirovich
FKU SIZO-2 UFSIN Rossii po g. Moskve
ul. Novoslobodskaya d. 45
127055 Moskva Russia

Alexey Sutuga has been a member of Autonomous Action since the early 2000s. He was first active in Irkutsk and then in Moscow. He participated in every single major campaign of the anarchist movement in the past ten years, and supported the journal Avtonom.

In 2007, he joined the ecological protest camp against uranium enrichment in city of Angarsk in Siberia, which was assaulted by nationalists in the early morning hours. Ilya Borodaenko from Nahodka of Pacific Ocean was murdered there, and a number of other visitors of the camp were seriously wounded.

Alexey was arrested on the evening of 17th of April, and has been in remand prison since then. He, together with Alexey Olesinov, is accused of having taken part in an incident in the Moscow club “Vozdukh”, where on 17th of December, during a punk-hardcore concert, a conflict between the audience and the security took place.

The club security, consisted of supporters of the far right, and were provoking guests. Due to the conflict, the concert was stopped prematurely, but the security attempted to take some guests hostage, threatening them with punishment from their friends – nationalist football hooligans. Concert guests resisted, the security opened fire with rubber coated metal bullets, but soon the concert-goers gained the upper hand and the security was neutralised and sent to the hospital.

More on the case of the Moscow prisoners: http://avtonom.org/en/mda

The Butyrka prison also has a form which can be used in order to send letters:
http://wr1.fsin-service.ru/Letter-Client/main.html#new_letter
However, this form is only in Russian and paying for this service (minimal payment is around 1.20 euros) requires either a Russian bank account or an account with some internet payment system, common in Russia  (such as yandex.dengi or webmoney). In the form, you must indicate year of birth of Sutuga – – 1986.

Full list of prisoners in former Soviet Union by Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow:

http://wiki.avtonom.org/en/index.php/Category:Prisoners_in_former_Soviet_Union

source

Solidarity with Alexey Sutuga!

 From http://inter.antifa.ru

Alexey Sutuga, anarchist, anti-fascist and member of Autonomous Action, was arrested on Tuesday evening, April 17, in Moscow. The arrest took place during a fundraising effort in support of anti-fascist prisoners.

It was learned almost after a day after the arrest that Alexey is now in Remand Prison No. 2, also known as Butyrka Prison.

The police accuse him of the same crime as anti-fascist *Alexey Olesinov, who has already been in custody for a month — complicity in the incident at the Moscow club Vozdukh, on December 17, 2011, when neo-Nazis working security attacked concert goers and then blamed anti-fascists for this assault.

Voluntary donations for the support of anti-fascists in detention, particularly Alexey Olesinov and Igor Kharchenko, were collected in downtown Moscow on April 17. The event was organized by activists of the anti-racist human rights initiative Direct Help. About fifteen people, including Alexey Sutuga, showed up for the event. Two police officers approached the group at 8:30 p.m., according to witnesses. They identified themselves and asked why there were so much garbage around the bench where everyone was gathered.

The police then asked everyone present to show their documents. When people refused to show them, two plain clothes officers appeared instantly out of nowhere, followed shortly by five or six of their colleagues.

One of them presented his ID, muttered something to the effect of “Criminal Investigation Department, guys,” and said, “Get him!” Police officers obeyed him, grabbing Alexey and leading him off towards the highway.

The plain clothes officers immediately followed them, no longer paying any attention to the rest of the crowd, although they had promised to arrest all those who had no documents and take them to a police station. Among those who arrested Alexey was the well-known Moscow FSB agent Yevgeny Platov, better known as “Zhenya the FSB Guy.” (You can read more about him and his persecution of Moscow anarchists here, in Russian: http://avtonom.org/news/feisy-vs-anarkhisty-kak-boitsy-nevidimogo-foront…)

It’s worth noting that a group of anarchists, including Alexey, had been detained a week earlier by the same plain clothes officers, but were released without charges.

Sutuga’s family and friends did not know of his whereabouts for almost twenty-four hours: he didn’t answer his phone. Information about his whereabouts was only released on the evening of April 18. It was reported that he is in Butyrka Prison and, apparently, Basmanny District Court quickly sanctioned his pretrial detention.

He has been charged with “hooliganism” (Article 213, Part 2 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code). The press service of the Moscow police reported that Alexey Sutuga has been charged in connection with the same case as Alexey Olesinov.

Recently, it became known that police are attempting to fabricate a second criminal case against Olesinov. On April 17, police confronted him with a young man who claims to have been attacked by Alexey on December 4, 2011, although on this day Olesinov was posting articles on the Internet. (For more details, in Russian, see: http://ru.indymedia.org/newswire/display/26512/index.php.)

As a member of Autonomous Action has explained, “The case against the well-known anti-fascist Alexey Olesinov, now remanded, has been investigated for several months and is now collapsing. It seems that the human rights campaign in support of Olesinov has begun to irritate the police. If they had something on Sutuga, they would have followed the legal procedures for this case. And it turns out that they have just arrested a person and held him incommunicado for almost a whole day. It looks as if the police have wild imaginations.”

For more information about the incident at the Vozdukh club, see:

https://avtonom.org/en/people/aleksei-olesinov

For information about persecution of other anarchists and anti-fascists in Moscow, see:

https://avtonom.org/en/people/antti-rautiainen

http://anarcho-news.info/news-534 (in Russian)

Funds are urgently needed to defray Sutuga’s legal expenses. You may donate through Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow. Instructions are available here:

http://wiki.avtonom.org/en/index.php/Donate

_____

Editor’s note. This appeal was originally published, in English, on the Autonomous Action web site. It has been slightly edited to make it more readable.

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Updates

*Moscow anti-fascist may become permanently disabled in pre-trial detention

*Police places pressure on relatives and friends of jailed Russian antifascists. Your support is needed