Chechen national Adam Osmayev, suspected of masterminding a terrorist attack against Russian President Vladimir Putin last year, said he fears “physical annihilation” by state security services in an Odesa pre-trial detention center, where he spent the last year.
Authorities
say Osmayev and another Chechen native, Ilia Pianzin, allegedly prepared to murder
the Russian leader before his re-election in 2012. But, as the story goes, they
suffered when a handmade bomb exploded in their Odesa apartment, killing a
third accomplice, Ruslan Madayev, in late February 2012.
But the
facts and timing were always suspicious, casting many to doubt that any such
assassination plot existed, much less an incompetent one like the authorities
described.
The news of
the threat to Putin was first aired by Russia’s state-controlled Channel One
just days before March 4 presidential elections, in which Putin was re-elected,
spurring talk of a PR gimmick to boost Putin’s poll standings.
Later,
Ukraine’s prosecutors said Osmayev was preparing to kill Chechen President
Ramzan Kadyrov. But Osmayev’s trial in the case is being held in Odesa. He’s
appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to stop his extradition to
Russia. Unlike him Pianzin has been extradited to Russia.
While
Pianzin and Osmayev reportedly admitted guilt, they retracted the confessions, claiming
they did so under pressure, Osmayev’s lawyer, Olga Chertok, said. Now, more
than a year after the incident, Osmayev and his defenders fear he could be
murdered.
“They wrote
a note ‘inclined to escape’ in my case, which is absolutely baseless invention
by FSB and SBU (Russian and Ukrainian security
services),” Osmayev said in a statement read by his wife, Amina Okuyeva, to the press conference
on March 11 in Kyiv.
“Soon,
confirming my fears a psychologist has been attached to me to find scientific
proof of my ‘psychological instability’ and my inclination for escape or
suicide,” he added, noting he was in good mood and had no plans to harm himself.
The state
prison service wasn’t available for comment.
“Adam is
now wasted PR material,” Okuyeva, his wife said. “But as a trial system has
been launched and his indictment consists of five articles, they simply don’t
know what to do with him now.”
Osmayev was
formally accused of organizing a terrorist organization, preparing a terrorist
attack, illegal weapons handling, damaging other people’s property and using
the false passport, his lawyer Olga Chertok said.
The lawyer claimed
that Osmayev was peacefully living in Odesa and involved in the oil business of
his father, Alanbek Osmayev. She added that he most probably received a
passport on the name of Sultan Dolakov, thanks to a Russian program for
protection of the opposition.
His wife,
Okuyeva, said Osmayev may have been a way to harass his father, an influential
businessman who had disputes with Kadyrov.
Now, in the
worst-case scenario, Osmayev could be sentenced to 12 years of prison if
convicted.
The next court hearing of Osmayev’s case is
scheduled on March 18.
Kyiv
Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
