The insane prisoner Ekimenko, who cannot count, was accused of drug dealing

In Moscow, Nikita Ekimenko, a disabled person from childhood of group I (indefinitely), was arrested for mental illness. Alas, the arrests of seriously ill, blind and legless people today will not surprise anyone. But there is, so to speak, a “zest” in this story. This is the second “walker” of a disabled person in the same case. The first time Ekimenko was placed behind bars in 2013, and then Moscow psychiatrists came out in defense of the 18-year-old guy, calling both the accusation and the detention insane.

After Nikita (he was in a terrible state: he couldn’t even remember his name and constantly called for his mother) was found in the cell of the pre-trial detention center by the MK observer, a member of the PMC of Moscow, there was a fuss and the guy was released. But all these years, as it turned out, he was not allowed to live in peace. And now they decided to send Nikita to jail again, contrary to logic, common sense and, apparently, the law.

How the whole system fights against one mentally unhealthy guy – in the material “MK”.

– Help, Nikita behind bars! – the crying voice of Tatyana Ekimenko’s mother cannot be confused with anything, and it looks like deja vu. In the same way, she pleaded for help many years ago when her son was put in jail for the first time.

– Did Nikita do something again? – I ask quite a logical question.

– No, what are you! This is all in the same criminal case that was initiated in 2013.

I would never believe her words, but here are the documents. And the lawyer, who helps my mother from the very beginning, confirms: this is an old case, there are no newly discovered circumstances.

Let me remind you of a strange story that MK wrote about many years ago (the article in the newspaper was called “Mentally Ill Consequence”).

In 2013, a patrol stopped Nikita, who had with him a certificate of disability due to mental illness and the phone number of his mother-guardian. The police did not call the parent, but took the guy to the police department in the Fili-Davydkovo district. Ekimenko was “found” with hashish and electronic scales. “Found out,” I write in quotation marks, not by chance. The search was carried out with violations, moreover, one of the attesting witnesses disappeared (it was not possible to interrogate him either at the stage of investigation or trial), and the second one (remarkably, he was brought from the colony to testify) stated that he was not present at the procedure and Nikita never seen before.

But this is not the only, and not the main “jamb” of the investigation.

Nikita has been disabled since childhood indefinitely, and his illness is so serious that he needs constant help. A letter was sent to the investigators and the court from the specialists of PND No. 2 of the Psychiatric Clinical Hospital named after. Alekseev. Psychiatrists then indicated that the severity of schizophrenic personality changes was such that Eremenko could not even name his date of birth and place of registration.

I will allow myself, as I did eight years ago (especially since now it is again relevant), to quote this letter: “The accusation does not stand up to criticism either. The patient studied only in the primary grades of a correctional school and cannot perform the simplest arithmetic operations for addition and subtraction. And the steelyard was seized from him, which is necessary for an accurate study with tenths of grams …

The patient needs treatment and, for health reasons, cannot be in a pre-trial detention center on a general basis. However, despite the appeal of the dispensary to the investigator, he continues to be there.”

This collective letter from psychiatrists did not help. And a year later, in the spring of 2014, I, then a member of the PMC of Moscow, found Nikita in the cell of SIZO No. 3, known as “Krasnopresnenskaya forwarding”. Soon he was released by the presidium of the Moscow City Court with the wording: “Do not choose a measure of restraint.”

Be that as it may, Eremenko was kept in the pre-trial detention center for a total of almost a year and a half, of which he spent most of it in the Butyrki mental hospital. When it came to court, Nikita was given compulsory psychiatric treatment. He passed it. This would have ended if it were not for the active mother, who decided to prove her son’s innocence at all costs and rehabilitate him. As a result, the Moscow City Court declared the decision of the lower court illegal (again, he cited as an example the strangeness with witnesses). The case was sent to the prosecutor, who decided not to close it, but to send it back to the Fili-Davydkovo police department.

And off we go…

Investigators struggled to find new evidence of the guy’s guilt. They came to interrogate him at the psychiatric dispensary, searched for him at the sanatorium, where he was sent by the Moscow Health Department. Each time after the visits of the authorities, Nikita’s mental state worsened, and then he recovered for several months. So all these 8 years have passed. The criminal case was either suspended (with the wording “due to a temporary illness”, although the disability is indefinite), then resumed.

“Don’t the cops have anything to do?” – you ask. And you will be absolutely right. There is only one way to explain the fanatical desire of the investigators to prove their case: they do not need bad statistics. And my mother, as I said, demanded a complete rehabilitation of her son. At some point, she abandoned this idea, but the flywheel, as they say, was launched.

When will they leave us? exclaims Tatyana. – On July 11, 2022, I came to the deputy head of the investigation department, Oksana Volkova, to receive procedural documents. And the next day, on the 12th, she put her son on the federal wanted list! Why did she do it? After all, if he was needed for interrogation, then by law she was obliged to call us with a summons.

Nikita never hid. His address and phone number, like mine, are known to law enforcement agencies. But on October 10, my son was detained and brought to the police department. I was not allowed to see him for a long time (as was the case during the first detention in 2013). When I finally broke through to the police department in the Fili-Davydkovo district, I saw a scene: Nikita was sitting on the floor in handcuffs and crying. In front of him were two policemen with weapons and two women: Oksana Volkova, deputy head of the investigation department, and Milana Boksha, investigator.

Now Nikita is in SIZO No. 7.

– It is not clear what the police want to achieve, – says the lawyer. – Compensation for the incompleteness of the investigation after the return of the criminal case to the prosecutor by the court is unacceptable, in accordance with the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of 08.12.2003. That is, no new investigative actions aimed at collecting and obtaining new evidence are impossible in principle.

The statute of limitations for drug cases is 15 years. So formally it can be resumed. Apparently, in order not to make a procedural decision on Ekimenko’s non-involvement in the crime, they decided to extract confessions from him many years later. And how to do it? In a pre-trial detention center, of course, – it’s easiest to get evidence there …