Sychyov Case In Trouble
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer
MOSCOW — Prosecutors in the Andrei Sychyov case ran into trouble Friday when one key witness recanted earlier testimony and a second skipped town despite having received a summons to appear in court.
Sychyov, a first-year conscript serving at the Chelyabinsk Armor Academy, was the victim of a brutal hazing incident in January that left him with gangrene in his feet and legs. Sychyov’s legs and genitals were subsequently amputated.
A second-year soldier at the academy, Alexander Sivyakov, has been accused of carrying out the attack. Sivyakov is charged with “exceeding his authority with grave consequences.”
Andrei Shevchenko, a witness to the hazing, told the Chelyabinsk military court Friday that investigators had forced him to sign a prepared statement, Interfax reported. Shevchenko said that investigators had beaten him and threatened him with jail time. He could not, however, recall the names of the investigators.
Shevchenko was the fifth witness in the Sychyov case to withdraw his previous testimony.
The star witness for the prosecution, Artyom Nikitin, left Chelyabinsk on Friday and returned home to the Moscow region, although he had been summoned to appear in court that day. Nikitin sent a telegram to the court explaining that he had made the trip for family reasons.
According to court filings, Nikitin was on duty as an orderly on New Year’s Eve and witnessed the hazing incident first hand. Nikitin had earlier recanted his previous testimony, which he claimed was given under duress.
The prosecution’s case was bolstered Thursday by the testimony of Renat Talipov, an emergency care physician at a Chelyabinsk hospital who examined Sychyov after the hazing incident. Talipov said that he had discovered anal fissures and tears measuring from three to four millimeters in length, Kommersant reported. Talipov declined to speculate on the cause of the tears, a possible indication of rape, but noted that they had gone unnoticed by physicians at the military hospital.
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