The court commuted sentences from imprisonment to forced labor for three former police officers Akbar Sergaliev, Denis Konovalov and Maxim Umetbaev, who were previously convicted of fabricating a case against journalist Ivan Golunov. This is reported by TASS with reference to the lawyer Sergei Badamshin.
According to Badamshin, Golunov in court supported the change of punishment for Konovalov and did not object to forced labor for Umetbaev and Sergaliev. At the same time, he opposed the release of another person involved in the case, Roman Feofanov, since he never apologized. As a result, the court refused Feofanov.
According to Baza, Umetbaev will work at a poultry farm near Nizhny Novgorod. It is not yet known where Sergaliev and Konovalov will be sent.
Ivan Golunov was detained on June 6, 2019 on Tsvetnoy Boulevard in Moscow on suspicion of drug trafficking. For more than 12 hours he was not allowed to contact his relatives and call a lawyer. In the Department of Internal Affairs for the Western District of Moscow on Lobachevsky Street, he was beaten. Hand washings and cuts of nails, which would have made it possible to find out whether he had touched drugs, were carried out a day after the arrest.
The Golunov case provoked mass pickets in his support near the building of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on Petrovka, as well as in other countries. Representatives of the media, public figures, musicians, actors, and politicians advocated for the termination of the case. On June 10, Kommersant, Vedomosti and RBC came out with the same front pages, on which it was written in large print: "I / We are Ivan Golunov."
On June 11, 2019, 5 days after his arrest, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs dropped the charges and released Ivan Golunov due to lack of evidence of his guilt. On December 18, 2019, about six months after the incident and a day before President Putin's annual press conference, the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation into violations committed during the journalist's detention.
On January 30, 2020, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow arrested five former employees of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Closed Joint-Stock Company of the City of Moscow – Denis Konovalov, former detectives of the department for combating illicit trafficking in heroin, synthetic drugs, psychotropic and potent substances from the Department of Internal Affairs of the Closed Joint-Stock Company for drug control, Akbar Sergaliev, Maxim Umetbaev, Roman Feofanov and the former deputy head of this department, police major Igor Lyakhovets.
Sergaliev, Umetbaev and Feofanov were sentenced to eight years in prison, Konovalov to five. Their boss, Sergei Lyakhovets, received 12 years. Later, on appeal, the court reduced the sentences for each of them by six to nine months.
In December 2022, the court ordered to pay Golunov 1.5 million rubles in a lawsuit against the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Baza writes that the journalist has not yet received the money.
