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

Mylnikov Case Summary

Mylnikov's partner, while he himself is a common blackmailer. At that time, apparently sensing exposure, Mylnikov disappeared from Moscow.

Mylnikov himself, during the investigation, at the trial, and in conversation with members of the Commission, denied that he wrote and sent the threatening letters. According to him, he might have written the manuscript appearing in the case later at the request of the investigator for purposes unknown to Mylnikov.

Based on the testimony of 17-year-old Anzhelika Tumasyan (she handed over Mylnikov's manuscript to the FSB) and a handwriting expert analysis, Moscow City Court judge Marina Komarova found Mylnikov guilty of an act of terrorism and sentenced him to 6 years and 8 months of strict regime imprisonment. A subsequent cassation appeal from lawyer Evgeny Chernousov was left unsatisfied by the Supreme Court.

Mylnikov did not appear at the final court session where the sentence was read; he was placed on a wanted list and, according to as-yet unconfirmed information from his lawyer, was detained several months later.

In a conversation with a member of the Commission, Natalya Zander—the woman whose release Mylnikov had demanded—confirmed the investigation's version in general terms. Zander categorically denies the possible involvement of other acquaintances of hers or her husband's friends in writing the threatening letters, let alone in the explosions themselves.

Questions and Perplexities

The main question that arises when reviewing the Mylnikov case: why did the investigation and the court not want to investigate the episode of Mylnikov's arrival at the MVD on August 31 and September 1, 1999?

As we know from the response of the Deputy Head of the Criminal Police Service of the Main Directorate for Combating Illegal Drug Trafficking of the MVD of the RF, M.G. Melikhov (No. 9/9-2440 dated September 25, 2002), it was on those very days that Mylnikov approached UBNoN officer V.M. Kirienkov with information about possible explosions in Moscow.

This information took the form of messages on his pager (No. 974-01-11, subscriber 777556) with the following content:

• "If tomorrow N. is not home, there will be a big salute" (August 30, 1999);
• "We promised and we will do it. We are waiting for the issue to be resolved. Your friends" (September 1, 1999).

As it became known, including from Mylnikov's interrogation in the court session, after his second arrival with the specified message, which took place immediately after the explosion on Manezh Square on August 31 (unlike the first one, which preceded this explosion), he was questioned by one of the heads of the UBNoN MVD RF and an FSB representative seconded to him. Based on the results of the conversation on September 3, an official letter was sent to the UFSB for Moscow and the Moscow Region, signed by the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, in which the information provided above was reported.

Questions Arise

1. What operational actions were taken regarding this "double" fact and why did this fundamentally important episode not enter the indictment in the Mylnikov case?
2. Why, despite repeated motions by the defendant and his defense counsel, was the witness V.M. Kirienkov, who was ready to present his testimony regarding the episode of Mylnikov's visit to the MVD, not questioned by the court?
3. In connection with this episode, the qualification of the act charged against Mylnikov by the Moscow City Court remains absolutely incomprehensible. Since he indeed (of which there is no doubt) informed the competent authorities about the threat of explosions in Moscow, the investigation and the court were obliged to investigate his involvement in the terrorist attacks that actually took place. Especially since the messages he transmitted (those that were anonymous) quite definitely indicated the approximate dates and the type of objects to be blown up — residential buildings.
4. The refusal to consider episodes related to Mylnikov's personal visit to the MVD is all the more strange given that an anonymous threat prior to any terrorist attacks in Moscow (received by the Prosecutor General's Office on August 21) should have caused much less justified fears about their reality than the ignored episode of Mylnikov's visit to the MVD.

In connection with this and with the failure to identify Mylnikov's involvement in the storage, manufacture, or acquisition of any explosive substances, the refusal of the investigation and the court to qualify the messages he transmitted anonymously under Article 207 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (knowingly false report of an act of terrorism) and his conviction under the more severe Article 205 (threat of committing a terrorist act) seems no less strange.
This bewilderment is accompanied by another: why did the investigation, risking more than once losing sight of such a serious criminal and having not identified as a result any of his connections with real terrorists or the possibility of independently carrying out any explosions (including those that actually took place in September 1999), continue to charge Mylnikov under Article 205?

Thus, there remain justified doubts about the legality of the criminal prosecution of A.V. Mylnikov in connection with the September bombings in Moscow. There are two possible reasons for this.

1. The desire of the investigative and judicial authorities, under possible pressure from the FSB, to get rid of a failed terrorist who persistently tried to notify the media about their receipt of warnings about future explosions.
2. The desire of the employees of the specified bodies not to inform society about the identified connections of Mylnikov with persons involved in the bombings in Moscow, if these connections do not fit into the only version that was repeatedly publicly declared by the highest officials of the FSB and the Prosecutor General's Office.