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Mikhail Trepashkin

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In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Ivanovich and the family name is Trepashkin.
Mikhail Trepashkin
Native name
Михаил Иванович Трепашкин
Born(1957-04-07)7 April 1957
Malkovo, Lyozna District, Vitebsk Region, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union
Allegiance Soviet Union  Russia
Service / branch
Years of service1975-1978, 1979-2000
RankPolkovnik
AwardsMedal "For Distinction in Military Service"
Medal "For Courage"
Alma materFSB Academy

Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin (Russian: Михаил Иванович Трепашкин; born 7 April 1957) is a Russian attorney and former Federal Security Service (FSB) colonel who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 that followed the Dagestan war and were one of the causes of the Second Chechen War. During his investigation, he was arrested by the FSB and sentenced to four years' imprisonment for "revealing state secrets". His arrest has been criticized by a number of human rights organizations and he has been called a political prisoner.[1][2]

Career in the KGB and FSB

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Trepashkin started working for the KGB in 1984 as an investigator of underground trade in stolen art. At the beginning of the 1990s, Trepashkin moved to the Internal Affairs department of the FSB, where he worked for Nikolai Patrushev. He investigated connections of FSB officers with criminal groups. He won a medal for intercepting a plane-load of weapons sold by FSB officers to Chechen rebels.[3]

In 1995, Trepashkin got involved in the Bank Soldi affair, described by Scott Anderson in a 2009 GQ article. Trepashkin was working on an FSB sting operation against a bank extortion ring linked to Salman Raduyev, a Chechen rebel who was then fighting against Russia in the First Chechen War. The sting resulted in a raid on a Bank Soldi branch in Moscow in Dec 1995. Trepashkin claims that the raid uncovered bugging devices used by the extortionists, whose serial numbers linked their origin to the FSB or Ministry of Defense. Furthermore, a van outside the bank was monitoring the bugging devices. In the van was Vladimir Romanovich, an FSB agent who Trepashkin claims was working for the criminals. However, most of those arrested in the sting were released. Nikolai Patrushev took Trepashkin off the case, and began an investigation of Trepashkin instead.[4]

In 1997, Trepashkin wrote a letter to President Boris Yeltsin attempting to bring light to the case and corruption in the FSB. He resigned from the FSB, successfully sued its leadership, and got a job with the tax police.[5]

At a press conference on 17 November 1998, Alexander Litvinenko, Victor Shebalin and other members of FSB claimed to have received an order to kill Boris Berezovsky and Trepashkin. The group members claimed that the order came from an FSB department called URPO, the Division of Operations against Criminal Organizations.[3][6]

Investigation of Russian apartment bombings and imprisonment

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Trepashkin was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings. Two sisters whose mother was killed in one of the houses hired Trepashkin to represent them in the trial of two Russian Muslims accused of transporting explosives for the bombings.[7]

While preparing for the trial, Trepashkin said he uncovered a trail of a suspect whose description had disappeared from the files. He claimed that the man turned out to be an FSB member named Vladimir Romanovich, the same man he claimed had been working for criminals in the Moscow Bank Soldi raid of 1995.[8] Trepashkin said that a witness identified only the first of the 2 composite images distributed by the official investigation. This implied that the official investigation doctored the composite image to hide the perpetrators from the FSB.[9] But Trepashkin never managed to air his findings in court. On 22 October 2003, just a week before the hearings, Trepashkin was arrested for illegal arms possession. He was convicted by a closed military court to four years for revealing state secrets.[10] An appeal court later overturned the arms possession charge, but the other sentence remained. In September 2005, after serving two years of his sentence, Trepashkin was released on parole, but two weeks later was re-arrested after the State appealed the parole decision.[11]

Trepashkin investigated a letter attributed to Achemez Gochiyayev and found that the alleged Gochiyayev's assistant who arranged the delivery of sacks might have been vice-president of Kapstroi-2000 Kormishin, originally from Vyazma.[12]

Trepashkin suffered from asthma with bronchial attacks on a daily basis, itching dermatosis and pain in the area of his heart, and he needed medical treatment. However, he told Amnesty International that he was denied medical treatment, held in a freezing punishment cell, and transported with imprisoned tuberculosis patients who "were coughing right into your face because they were unable to either cover their mouths or turn away."[13]

On 30 November 2007, Trepashkin was freed with the expiration of his four-year prison term.[14]

Western press coverage

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The case of Trepashkin caught the attention of the Western press,[15] caused an uproar among human rights campaigners,[16][17][18][19][20] was put on record by Amnesty International, mentioned by the US State Department[21] and featured in an award-winning documentary Disbelief.[22][23]

American war correspondent Scott Anderson wrote a story about his interviews with Trepashkin for the September 2009 issue of the GQ magazine. However, according to NPR's David Folkenflik, Condé Nast management gave orders to limit circulation of the story. These included banning the story off of GQ's website, not showing the US issue to "Russian government officials, journalists or advertisers", not publishing the story in any overseas Condé Nast magazines, not publicizing the story, and asking Anderson to not syndicate it 'to any publications that appear in Russia'.[24][25]

Involvement in Alexander Litvinenko affair

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In a letter from prison Trepashkin alleged that in 2002 FSB decided to kill Alexander Litvinenko. He also claimed that FSB had plans to kill relatives of Litvinenko in Moscow in 2002, although these have not been carried out.[26][27]

Trepashkin claimed that supervisors and people from the FSB promised not to send him to the prison if only he leaves the Sergei Kovalev commission and start working with the FSB "against Litvinenko".[28]

After the imprisonment

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Trepashkin continues to his work as a lawyer and participates in human rights activism.

In 2008–10, Trepashkin defended Yulia Privedennaya, leader of the organization "F.A.K.E.L.-P.O.R.T.O.S.", whom the authorities accused of creating an illegal armed formation, and then decided to put in the hospital for a mental examination.[29][30]

In March 2010, Trepashkin signed the online anti-Putin manifesto of the Russian opposition "Putin must go".

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ "Russian Ex-Agent's Sentencing Called Political". Los Angeles Times. 20 May 2004. Retrieved 1 July 2021.
  2. ^ Узел, Кавказский. "Trepashkin recognized as political prisoner". Caucasian Knot. Retrieved 1 July 2021.
  3. ^ a b Goldfarb, Alexander; Litvinenko, Marina (2007). Death of a dissident: the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the return of the KGB (1st Free Press hardcover ed.). New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1-4165-5165-2.
  4. ^ Anderson, Scott (September 2009). "None Dare Call it Conspiracy". GQ (Gentlemen's Quarterly): 250, 312.
  5. ^ Anderson, None Dare..., p 250.
  6. ^ (in Russian)Who is Mikhail Trepashkin and why the powers persecute the former FSB investigator Archived 12 September 2009 at the Wayback Machine, The Case of Defence Lawyer Trepashkin, Public Committee to Protect Mikhail Trepashkin, 10 October 2007, computer translation
  7. ^ "The Trepashkin Case". Archived from the original on 25 February 2006. Retrieved 4 February 2006.
  8. ^ Anderson, Scott (September 2009). "None Dared Call it Conspiracy". GQ: 312.. Anderson discusses the police sketches, Romanovich, the 1995 bank raid, and Trepashkin's claims
  9. ^ Alex Rodriguez (19 May 2004). "Chicago Tribune Follows Trepashkin's Lead". PRIMA-News. Archived from the original on 7 October 2011. Retrieved 4 September 2009. with a re-print of Verdict near on sleuth who talked too much; Ex-KGB agent suspects a former cohort was involved in a bombing blamed on Chechens. He was jailed just before he was to present his case, Chicago Tribune, 18 May 2004.
  10. ^ Russian Ex-Agent's Sentencing Called Political, Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, 20 May 2004.
  11. ^ "The Trepashkin Case". Archived from the original on 19 February 2006. Retrieved 4 February 2006.
  12. ^ (in Russian)Tenth anniversary of the "black autumn" in Russia, Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. interviews Mikhail Trepashkin and others, Radio Liberty, 4 September 2009, computer translation
  13. ^ "Document". 31 March 2006.
  14. ^ "Бывший сотрудник ФСБ Михаил Трепашкин вышел из колонии" [Former FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin released from prison]. www.lenta.ru.
  15. ^ "Terror-99". www.eng.terror99.ru. Archived from the original on 31 December 2005.
  16. ^ "Terror-99". Archived from the original on 19 July 2006. Retrieved 4 February 2006.
  17. ^ Human Rights First - call for action
  18. ^ International Commission of Jurists - Trepashkin statement Archived 9 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  19. ^ "Text of D.C. Bar International Law Section letter". Archived from the original on 4 October 2013. Retrieved 5 December 2005.
  20. ^ Amnesty International appeal Archived 11 March 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  21. ^ "The Trepashkin Case". Archived from the original on 19 February 2006. Retrieved 4 February 2006.
  22. ^ "DISBELIEF - a film by Andrei Nekrasov 2004". Archived from the original on 18 July 2006. Retrieved 18 July 2006.
  23. ^ "Terror-99". Archived from the original on 11 June 2009. Retrieved 16 April 2009.
  24. ^ Folkenflik, David (4 September 2009). "Why 'GQ' Doesn't Want Russians To Read Its Story". NPR.org. Retrieved 4 September 2009.
  25. ^ Anderson, Scott (September 2009). "None Dare Call it Conspiracy". GQ (Gentlemen's Quarterly): 246.
  26. ^ М. Трепашкин: "Создана очень серьезная группа" (in Russian). Chechen Press State News Agency. 1 December 2006. Archived from the original on 19 December 2007. Retrieved 1 December 2006.
  27. ^ Березовский и УРПО / дело Литвиненко. Агентура.Ру (in Russian). 27 November 2006. Archived from the original on 8 December 2006. Retrieved 30 November 2006.
  28. ^ Interview with Mikhail Trepashkin Archived 7 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine, RFE/RL, 1 December 2007. Russian: "давай вместе работать против Литвиненко и уйди из комиссии по взрывам домов и тогда тебя никто не тронет. Я говорил со своими шефами, совершенно точно, тебя не тронут. Кончай с Ковалевым Сергеем Адамовичем контактировать в Госдуме и так далее."
  29. ^ Yulia Privedennaya on the site Political Prisoners (in Russian)
  30. ^ Activist pronounced "sane", trial continues. Amnesty International. 20 April 2010
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