The Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced five residents of occupied Melitopol, accused in a case of preparing a terrorist act in April 2022, to terms ranging from 11 to 14 years of imprisonment, reported a 'Mediazona'* correspondent from the courtroom. The first five and a half years of the sentence the convicts will serve in prison, then in a high-security colony.
Igor Gorlov was sentenced to 14 years, Andrey Golubev to 12, Vladimir Zuev to 11, Alexander Zhukov to 12, and Yuri Petrov to 14 years. They were charged with 'participation in a terrorist community' and 'preparation for an act of international terrorism'. The Melitopol residents did not plead guilty.
According to the investigation, the men organized a 'terrorist underground' in the occupied city and planned to blow up a car filled with explosives near a humanitarian aid distribution point. All five, according to the prosecution, were members of the 'Union of ATO Participants of Melitopol', led by Vladimir Minko. Minko himself, according to the FSB, while in non-occupied Zaporizhzhia, led the group via correspondence.
At the same time, 37-year-old Gorlov was the only one among the defendants who remained an active serviceman of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the time of Melitopol's capture by Russian troops, three others were in the territorial defense reserve, and 64-year-old combat veteran Petrov had long retired. Before their arrest, most of them barely knew each other.
In court, the men claimed they were kidnapped by Russian security forces, held in underground prisons in Melitopol almost all the time in handcuffs and with bags over their heads, tortured with electricity, and beaten. Igor Gorlov said that when he was threatened with his family being tortured, he attempted suicide by cutting his throat. Medics managed to save him.
On April 19, they were taken to annexed Crimea, where they were officially detained and arrested, and then transferred to Moscow to the Lefortovo detention center.
According to 'Mediazona', the main evidence in the case against the Melitopol residents was correspondence in messengers on their phones, but the correspondence in the case materials did not discuss terrorist acts: it mainly concerned the movement of Russian troops and everyday problems. The case also includes confessions signed during the first interrogations. The defense insisted that they cannot be considered evidence as they were obtained under torture.
Most of the time, the trial was open, but at the end of October last year, it was closed, as reported to 'Mediazona' by the court's press service, due to 'the examination of evidence that should not become public' — the defendants' correspondence and technical details of making an improvised explosive device.
* Recognized in Russia as a 'foreign agent'.
Photo: Mediazona