[REGNUM] When it's not those who attack that go to jail, but those who defend themselves
by Daniil Moskovsky and Yuri Zainashev
The Supreme Court has recognized a knife as an acceptable means of self-defense when attacked with batons. The highest court came to this conclusion while studying the case of Magnitogorsk resident Zulfan Aznabaev, who was sentenced to more than ten years for premeditated murder.
The verdict was handed down on July 16, but the name of the defendant was only revealed on August 7.
"The Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court has determined: to overturn the appellate verdict of the Chelyabinsk Regional Court and the cassation ruling of the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Seventh Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction in relation to Zulfan Faritovich Aznabaev, and to transfer the criminal case for a new appellate hearing to the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Chelyabinsk Regional Court," the verdict reads.
Aznabaev was released from custody in the courtroom.
SELF-PROCLAIMED COLLECTORS
According to the defendant's lawyer, Evgeny Kaiguzin, Zulfan is an ordinary Russian who was involved in furniture assembly and other small businesses.
As stated in the verdict, on November 13, 2022, two acquaintances came to Aznabaev's apartment, demanding money. "They clearly did not come with good intentions, because one of the victims brought a rubber truncheon, " Kaiguzin tells the Regnum news agency." That is, they initially went there to harm my client. They came in without permission - they burst in. They started threatening, used violence. Yes, they had a conflict. The guests thought that Aznabaev owed them money, but my client did not think so."
As the case says, the guests beat the host with a rubber truncheon, breaking his finger. When Aznabaev's friend, who was in the apartment, stood up for him, the blows rained down on him too. Then Aznabaev grabbed a kitchen knife and "caused bodily harm."
One of the attackers was killed, the other was seriously wounded.
THEMIS'S HESITATION
The Ordzhonikidzevsky District Court of Magnitogorsk agreed that the man was defending himself, but found that the limits of self-defense had been exceeded. In addition, it turned out that in the fall of 2020, he had already been tried for drug possession and had gotten off with a suspended sentence. This time, the defendant was given six months in a penal colony.
In early 2024, the regional court overturned the sentence as too lenient. Aznabaev was found guilty of murder and attempted murder and sentenced to 11 years in a maximum security prison. According to the Chelyabinsk judges, by the time Zulfan attacked the guests, the conflict had been resolved, the owner of the apartment had no longer been beaten, which means there was no reason to use a knife.
The Supreme Court, however, in its verdict of July 16, objects: the owner of the apartment had every reason to fear the continuation of the conflict, since the guests did not leave it and continued to demonstrate the baton. If the end of the attack "was not obvious to the defender", he has the right to use self-defense.
"Success in the Supreme Court does not mean that the battle is over," warns Kaiguzin. " Theoretically, he could be taken into custody again. This happens. But I think they will sort it out now. After all, the Supreme Court pointed out the shortcomings that were made when the appellate verdict was issued."
"I COULD HAVE STABBED HIM WITH A ROSE"
Similar tragedies occur regularly in the country.
A recent nighttime brawl in Crimea caused a great stir. On July 25, in Yevpatoriya, a drunk man attacked two guys and a girl, picking on their "informal" appearance. The girl used pepper spray, and one of the informals stabbed the attacker with a knife. The blow was fatal.
It was later revealed that the attacker, 33-year-old Dzhankoy resident Eredzhep, supported radical Islamists. A murder case was opened against 22-year-old informal Kirill (name changed) and he was placed in pretrial detention. As his fiancée Alisa (name changed) told IA Regnum, her boyfriend defended himself.
"Kirill thought that this man would attack us, maybe hit me on the head with this bottle or stab me with a rose. But he didn't want to kill anyone," said Alice.
The girl is echoed by the detainee’s lawyer, Roman Lychkov.
According to him, all hope is that the investigation will consider what happened as an excess of the limits of necessary self-defense, and not as a premeditated murder. "There was definitely no such intent in the actions of the defendant," Lychkov explained to the Regnum news agency.
It was later revealed that the detainee's phone contained information that became the reason for initiating another criminal case - on the rehabilitation of Nazism. But that, as they say, is another story, and does not at all change the fact that Kirill could have decided that he and his girlfriend were in danger and tried to defend themselves.
In December 2023, an incident also happened to the Moscow metro driver Yuri, in which he had to use pepper spray. He was walking along the platform and saw two teenagers. Judging by their behavior, it seemed to him that they were not Muscovites, but visitors from the Caucasus.
"When I was passing by, they spat at my feet. I made a remark. "Is there something you don't like?" - the teenagers immediately "pouted". One punched me in the shoulder, another came closer and started threatening. Then I sprayed gas from a canister. They ran away. I dialed the police and gave the attackers' description," Yuriy says in an interview with IA Regnum.
He was sure that the incident was over, but in February he received a call informing him that a case had been opened. Not against the troublemakers, but against him. "Apparently, the parents of these teenagers started going to offices and asking for me to be charged with hooliganism," the driver suspects.
Thus, Yuri himself became a suspect. However, the case quickly attracted the attention of the public: the Investigative Committee leadership was bombarded with parliamentary inquiries and appeals from the Human Rights Council, and the Chairman of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, ordered the case to be closed.
IT IS POSSIBLE TO DEFEND YOURSELF - BUT ONLY THEORETICALLY
Experts say that the reason for such distortions in the interpretation of self-defense is the peculiarities of the law enforcement system, in which the work of a specific employee is assessed by the number of cases he has solved. Because of this, many in their work follow the path of least resistance, says Vladimir Mikhalevich, a retired police major general and member of the presidium of "Officers of Russia".
"If the limits of self-defense are exceeded, the police officer sort of gets a ready-made solved crime. No effort, no need to think long. Here he is, the alleged killer, and here is the victim. You can quickly fill out all the paperwork and send the case to court," explains IA Regnum Mikhalevich.
It is no coincidence, he says, that Aznabaev was accused not of exceeding the limits of self-defense, but immediately of “wet work.”
"Solving a murder is cool for the record, you know? Some prosecutors go that route, and judges do too. And everyone is happy, except for the victim, who was simply defending himself or his family," the general is indignant.
A week after the Supreme Court’s verdict, on July 22, the same issue was on the agenda of the Human Rights Council, at a meeting with the participation of the Council’s Chairman, Valery Fadeev.
Lawyer Igor Baranov, who spoke at the meeting, complained that the right to self-defense in the country is, in essence, only formal. Having once held senior positions in the prosecutor's office and the Investigative Committee, Baranov sees an accusatory bias in the work of his former colleagues.
"It seems to us that the investigation often applies the most severe qualification of the actions of those who defended themselves. The reasons? Sometimes officials are afraid that they will be thought badly of if they show leniency. That they will then be accused of corruption, negligence or incompetence," Baranov lists in an interview with IA Regnum.
The problem lies precisely with the investigators, because the courts, on the contrary, often soften the qualifications, transferring “deliberate actions” to necessary defense, the lawyer believes.
REFORM THE INVESTIGATION
"Together with the member of the presidium of the Human Rights Council Kirill Kabanov, we proposed such an innovation - to oblige in such cases to conduct an analogue of a comprehensive forensic examination. That is, at least three specialists - a doctor, a psychiatrist, a criminologist - must answer all the key questions about the circumstances of self-defense, including the psychological state of the person who was attacked," Baranov explained.
According to current rules, the investigation conducts a short examination with one simple question: is the suspect sane or not. According to the lawyer, experts must also assess how the person perceived the situation, how traumatic it was, whether the victim of the attack could correlate the level of threat with the methods of defense that she decided to use.
The members of the HRC, headed by Fadeyev, decided to convene an extended meeting of the Council with the participation of the judiciary and relevant departments, and to include this issue in the report that is prepared annually for the head of state. In the meantime, a working group has been created, which plans to present its proposals by the end of August.
In Russia, the legal system is not precedent-based, so lower courts are not obliged to follow the Supreme Court's verdict, says Baranov.
"Even in the case of the Magnitogorsk resident, we see that different authorities had different opinions. Personally, I believe that the Supreme Court made an absolutely correct decision: it was self-defense. Maybe the person exceeded its limits, but it happened in a traumatic situation. When you have a few seconds to make a decision, you often cannot adequately assess the level of threat," the lawyer explains.
ACQUITTED OF SELF-DEFENSE
The case of Zulfan Aznabaev, despite the Supreme Court's verdict, is not yet over. However, cases where people who killed criminals who attacked them in self-defense were fully acquitted, although rare, do happen.
In the winter of 2016, in the same Chelyabinsk region, five drunk criminals attacked the house of Alexander Grigoriev.
One of the attackers had a knife, the other had a stick, which he broke over Grigoriev's head. After the blow, Alexander was able to crawl to the gun safe. He shot four people and wounded the fifth. Investigators opened a murder case, sending the man into custody. The case also became resonant, after which Bastrykin ordered the Chelyabinsk resident to be released and the case to be closed.
In 2022, Grigoriev was mobilized to the North Military District ; he died in May of this year.
In the fall of 2021, the Tver Regional Court rehabilitated Alexander Zobenkov, who, with a knife in his hands, confronted a group of people who broke into his property and beat his wife and relatives with sticks. As a result, Zobenkov ended up in the dock on charges of triple murder. According to investigators, the defendant could have simply escaped, and therefore there was no need for a massacre.
But, according to Zobenkov, defending himself with a knife was the only chance to save his family and loved ones – and in the end the court sided with him.