"This is our terrible country...": Sergey Zuyev sent to prison from the operating table

As Novye Izvestia has already reported to the rector of the famous Shaninki University, Sergey Zuyev, who was detained in a fraud case together with ex-Deputy Minister of Education Marina Rakova and a number of other defendants, the measure of restraint was changed. Now, instead of the court-ordered house arrest, he was sent to a pre-trial detention center. The initiators were the investigating authorities and the prosecutor's office.

The teaching staff and students of Shaninka are shocked by the news of Zuev's arrest. The same question is heard in the corridors: "Why do they want to kill him?" They are, in this case, apparently, the investigating authorities and the prosecutor's office, which, by the way, initiated a new trial as it was suppressed. And also inspectors came to "Shaninka", and these inspections, as the teachers say, come from the filing of the prosecutor's office.

It is known that since the beginning of the year, Zuev has already undergone three surgical interventions. And the doctors came to the conclusion that he needed another operation - this time bypassing the other leg. This is not the case when a person hides behind his illness. And why put in a pre-trial detention center, if it is an economic matter? University professors comment on this event: “We have a hypothesis - the investigation did not find anything on him, so it wants to use his condition to knock out some evidence. Detention is apparently the only way for them. To say that we are outraged by the arrest is to say nothing. It's a feeling of shock".

It is also said that students and educators are going to take to the streets in defense of their rector. Journalist Arkady Dubnov writes on his blog:

“The absolute shamelessness of the Russian state is the transfer from house arrest to the pre-trial detention center of the 67-year-old rector of Shaninka, Sergey Zuyev, who has just undergone heart surgery. Darkness and abomination..."

Network analyst Kirill Lyats recalls that the landing of the intelligentsia in Russia has always been something commonplace, and hardly anyone will protest today about this:

“Today it differs little in this sense from the 20s of the last century. Likewise: come - let's go! - put in a car, taken to prison. The same submissiveness, the same silent amazement (no, rather fear mixed with relief that it was not his!) On the face of those around him, the same fear of saying a word or, even more so, clinging to the sleeve of the person being taken away.

Endless readiness to go to Golgotha at the slightest shout from a cattle, dressed in an overcoat with shoulder straps. Yes that Golgotha - it would be, at least, worthy, some kind of messianism - no, just into the abyss, just into the oven.

There are no values left for which someone wants to fall, protecting a loved one.

Fear again hovers over the city, quite obese, but not at all vegetarian.

Those who are capable of getting up, getting out, and protesting are gone. The proletarians have long been all in the mortgage, to students everything to the star, except smartphones, music and money.

We are on a new round of human obsession. And the return can be expected for a long time, 50 years..."

Zoya Svetova, a human rights activist and journalist, daughter of the famous Soviet dissidents Zoya Krakhmalnikova and Felix Svetov, is sure that Zuev's arrest is yet another proof that the institution of court in the country has been completely destroyed:

“This is my terrible country. I am very ashamed that I cannot stop this chaos. Yesterday Today Tomorrow. After reading this Verin's text, I remembered that I once saw Sergey Zuyev at my friends' dacha. With what love he spoke about his son Gleb, about his drawings. Today Sergey Zuyev is on a bunk in a pre-trial detention center. Probably in a quarantine cell. The Moscow City Court judge was ordered to send him there. Seriously ill, after heart surgery. This is not just another arrest of a clearly innocent person. This is a demonstrative arrest - "we can do whatever we want." What can be opposed to this? Write to Sergey in jail, collect money for Lawyers. And to know that any lawlessness ends. How does it all remind of the "blackness" of the late 70s, early 80s. Yes, there are nuances. But this is the subtle smell of "dead pores of leaf fall". I remember this atmosphere of horror, then mobilization, because you need to meet with lawyers, make transfers to prison, I remember how my friends were afraid to come to the house. I also remember others who came, brought money, wrote letters of support, foreign journalists, courts, visits to the pre-trial detention center. And now it is knocking on our doors again. Yes, a long time ago. But it seemed that after the death in the pre-trial detention center of Magnitsky, after the death of Aleksanyan, after the million articles that we wrote about all this - for that part of the elite that has not yet completely died out, it is impossible to admit what they allowed, so cynically, demonstratively impudently send a person in a pre-trial detention center with the sole purpose of breaking him. I really hope that Sergey will withstand all this physically. Morally all the more so - after all, such a crap causes internal resistance. I really hope that the decision of the Moscow City Court will be canceled. But, again, I am ashamed that we did not shout. And Vera Chelishcheva is right - and we are guilty that the institution of the court in Russia has been destroyed. So we wrote badly..."

Lawyer Alkhas Abgadzhava supports Svetova's conclusions and asks the Moscow judges who have made this decision:

“The rector of Shaninka, Sergey Zuyev, was nevertheless sent to a pre-trial detention center.

The appellate court upheld the prosecutor's request on the need for detention, since house arrest would not exclude the fact that the accused would abscond, affect the course of the investigation, destroy evidence, and so on.

Now let's go over the validity of such a court decision.

The brave investigators of the Main Investigation Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in Moscow demanded that they be taken into custody.

Sergey Zuev is the rector of a higher educational institution. He is 67 years old, we do not judge, he has an impeccable reputation and a bright biography. Unfortunately, there are still a number of serious illnesses and a recent operation.

Have you heard a lot of stories about how an elderly well-known rector, who had never been prosecuted before, destroyed evidence in the case, threatened witnesses, or fled through the forests and fields through cordons?

So I have not heard.

And how many stories have you heard about bribery, fraud, abuse of authority by employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in general and employees of this very GSO, in particular?

Hundreds, right?

In this regard, I have only one question for the judges of the Moscow City Court - who did you most often “shut down” for practice, famous university rectors, or law enforcement officers?"