Mylnikov

The Moscow City Court has sentenced a terrorist who threatened to blow up residential buildings in Moscow in September 1999. Authorities received his letters with threats a few days before the bombings of the buildings on Guryanova Street and Kashirskoye Highway. It was never possible to prove that this was not a coincidence.

Background

• 56-year-old Ivano-Frankivsk native Anatoly Mylnikov, head of the economic security service of the "Zolotye Stranitsy" [Golden Pages] publishing house, was accused of terrorism.
• Mylnikov served more than 20 years in prison for murder, rape, and sodomy—and only in the summer of 1999 was he released.
• In his cell, he met the husband of a woman who soon became his mistress.
• For her sake, he threatened to blow up the homes of Muscovites.
• Upon leaving prison, Mylnikov immediately went to his cellmate's wife and stayed to live with her.

The Threats

• On August 21, 1999, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, and on September 7, 1999, the editorial office of the media outlet "Novaya Gazeta" received written "Appeals" on behalf of a fictional organization "Volunteers of Russia."
• These appeals contained a demand to the authorities to release N.V. Zander, who had been arrested by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and a threat that if these demands were not met, "...every 7 days, communications, buildings, etc., will be blown up."
• Fearing the reality of the threats expressed in the "Appeal," representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office and the "Novaya Gazeta" editorial office forwarded the letters received by mail for further verification of jurisdiction to the FSB—the body tasked with fighting terrorism.

Investigation and Testimony

• Operational-search measures established the author of the text containing the threat in the "Appeal" and the sender of the letters—A.V. Mylnikov.
• This information was confirmed by a statement from A.E. Tumasyan, who contacted the Moscow and Moscow Region Directorate of the FSB on May 19, 2000.
• In her statement, she identified Mylnikov as the author of the "Appeal" text and its sender to various organizations, and confirmed the circumstances of the crime during the preliminary investigation.
• Witness Tumasyan testified in court that in the summer of 1999, at the apartment of N.V. Zander, Mylnikov, with whom she was in a close relationship, asked her to type a handwritten text he had prepared in her presence.
• This text contained a demand to release his cohabitant Zander from custody, and he instructed her on the procedure for preparing the letters: typing and printing the text on a computer belonging to one of her acquaintances, deleting the file from which the printout was made, destroying the handwritten text, and having the addresses on the envelopes written by outsiders, preferably random people.
• In August 1999, Mylnikov, then head of the security service of one of the firms, warned law enforcement agencies that terrorist attacks were being prepared in Moscow.
• According to him, the terrorists demanded the release of a certain Natalia Zander.
• During the investigation, it turned out that this woman was