The prosecutor’s office sees through the patient – Newspaper Kommersant No. 236 (7437) of 12/20/2022

The second court of cassation appointed for December 27 the hearing of the case of Pyotr Parpulov, the first person convicted of treason, released from serving his sentence due to a serious oncological disease. The prosecutor’s office demands to cancel two court decisions on the impossibility of treating Petr Parpulov in the colony. They were taken in May and June, after which Mr. Parpulov was urgently operated on in Moscow. Now, on the eve of the New Year, the court of third instance must study the materials of the case, and if it agrees with the accusation, the man will be returned to the colony.

The story of 67-year-old Petr Parpulov was told by Kommersant in May, after Tatyana Moskalkova, Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, drew attention to her. As an air traffic controller at the Sochi airport, Mr. Parpulov in 2014 turned out to be a defendant in a treason case – the FSB accused him of disclosing state secrets while on vacation in Georgia in 2010. According to the intelligence service, Pyotr Parpulov gave his distant relatives secret information about the departures of military aircraft from Adler during the “five-day war” in 2008. The defense insisted that the air traffic controller did not have access to state secrets, and the media talked about military aviation flights. Nevertheless, the court sentenced Mr. Parpulov to 12 years in prison, stating that his actions “could harm the interests of the Russian Federation.”

In 2019, he was diagnosed with three types of cancer at once, but due to the COVID-19 epidemic, it was only possible to conduct the necessary examinations and ultrasound by the summer of 2021. Then the doctors discovered two new tumors in Petr Parpulov. By November, the question of an urgent operation arose, and Petr Parpulov began to sue the Federal Penitentiary Service, indicating that his disease was on the list of diseases in which prisoners could be allowed to go home. Representatives of the colony and prison doctors insisted that Petr Parpulov’s condition was satisfactory, and the Parpulov family hoped that the court would oblige the Federal Penitentiary Service to invite civil oncologists to give an opinion on the urgency of the operation. The court was postponed eight times: the Federal Penitentiary Service did not provide the necessary documents, the wrong doctor who was summoned by the court appeared at the meeting, the judge was ill, Mr. Parpulov could not be connected to the meeting via video link, the court building was closed several times due to reports of “mining”. In April, Mr. Parpulov’s daughter, Yulia, complained to Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov and Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova about the delay in the process. In May, after the publication of Kommersant, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Tambov considered Petr Parpulov’s petition and released him “due to illness.”

In June, the prosecutor’s office appealed against the decision, considering Petr Parpulov’s medical diagnoses insufficient grounds for release, but lost the case. In September, the deputy prosecutor of the Tambov region, Eduard Gimatov, filed a cassation appeal, demanding that the May decision be canceled and the air traffic controller be sent to serve the remaining four years in a colony. By that time, Petr Parpulov had already been operated on in Moscow. In early December, various departments in three cities at once started looking for him, Yulia Parpulova told Kommersant: December 27th. I have no idea how to talk about this with my father, he is in rehabilitation, barely walks, needs constant medical supervision and regular tests. In addition, I do not understand what documents the court will consider in December on the state of health of the father in May.”

At the disposal of “Kommersant” there is a cassation presentation by the Deputy Prosecutor of the Tambov Region, Eduard Gimatov, filed with the Second Cassation Court in Moscow on September 30. “The court decisions were issued with significant violations of the criminal and criminal procedure laws that influenced the outcome of the case, and are subject to cancellation,” says Mr. Gimatov. In his opinion, Petr Parpulov “does not need constant care”, “evaded surgical treatment” in Tambov and “may be kept in a correctional facility on a general basis while undergoing appropriate treatment.” Mr. Gimatov also reports an outstanding disciplinary sanction, which the convicted person received “for violation of the dress code”, although the defense in May claimed that the sanction had been canceled.

The prosecutor’s office also objects to the position of the human rights ombudsman of the Tambov region Vladimir Repin: he studied the case of Pyotr Parpulov and reported on it to Tatyana Moskalkova, noting that the convict’s disease is included in the list of diseases in which people are released from the colony. The opinion of Vladimir Repin “was unreasonably taken into account by the court”, because “he is not a participant in criminal proceedings, he does not have any medical knowledge,” Mr. Gimatov believes. The deputy prosecutor also notes that an agreement was concluded between the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Tambov Region and the regional oncological dispensary, which allowed the air traffic controller to be operated on, and indicates that Mr. Parpulov was in a satisfactory condition at the time of his release.

“When he got out, I dragged him on me to the car, he couldn’t walk 100 meters, all his teeth fell out, he sat on liquids for months,” Yulia Parpulova described her father’s condition at the request of Kommersant. him in Moscow, so that we would be given a quota in the hospital, the cardiologist forbade him to be operated on, he was given a blood transfusion to raise his performance. One preoperative analysis, which is done only in Moscow, cost 66,000 rubles, and caring people helped us collect them. I doubt that the Federal Penitentiary Service would conduct so many examinations (if the prisoner was left in the colony, the Federal Penitentiary Service would bear the costs of his treatment.— “b”) and even more so for that kind of money. Moscow doctors, Ms. Parpulova says, provided her father with assistance that their colleagues in Tambov could hardly have provided, this was actually confirmed by two courts. Now she fears that if the cassation court takes into account the arguments of the prosecutor’s office, “her father will be sent to a colony right on New Year’s Day.”

“Kommersant” also managed to get acquainted with the decision of the judge of the Second Cassation Court Andrei Kablov on the direction of the prosecutor’s office for consideration. The document duplicates the arguments of the prosecutor, it also states that the Tambov courts did not take into account the “satisfactory state of health of the convict.” “I find that violations have been committed in this case,” states Mr. Kablov.

In March, the human rights foundation for helping prisoners “Rus Sitting” (included in the register of foreign agents), applying to the Constitutional Court in the case of the release of its client with a serious illness from a pre-trial detention center, stated that it was “practically impossible today” to be released from a Russian prison due to illness. According to the Federal Penitentiary Service for 2020 (this is the most up-to-date published information), 23% of those who asked for release due to a serious illness did not live to see it. Whether the prosecutor’s office had previously challenged the court’s decision to release him due to illness is unknown. Lawyer of the “First Department” (an association of lawyers and lawyers that provides assistance to those convicted under the article on treason) Yevgeny Smirnov believes that such statistics are unlikely to be kept, but calls the prosecutor’s appeal against release “due to illness” a rarity. The courts of first and second instance, having decided to release a seriously ill person, stated “the inability of the penitentiary system to provide assistance to the prisoner,” explains Yevgeny Smirnov. “The prosecutor’s office will appeal something in the cassation in exceptional cases. The case of Parpulov is the first known to me when the court accepted such a presentation from the prosecutor’s office for consideration, – says the expert. – Probably, the order was given not to release anyone from the colony under this article (on treason. “b”), and Petr Parpulov was the first (convicted under this article.— “b”), who were released due to illness.

Kommersant has a copy of Yulia Parpulova’s appeal to Tatyana Moskalkova: Ms. Parpulova thanks the Ombudsman for saving her father’s life and asks to “help again.” It has not yet been possible to get an operational comment from the office of the commissioner about the receipt of the appeal by Kommersant.

Maria Starikova