Vladimir Kvachkov - The Crossbow Coup

The Crossbow Coup

On December 22, 2009, the Supreme Court rejected the prosecutor's appeal and confirmed jury verdict. The next day, Kvachkov's apartment was assaulted by FSB and he was arrested again on charges of rising an insurrection using crossbows. Such cases are processed without jury and secretly, so some media have speculated that the new sentence may not be as successful for the defendant as the first one. Kvachkov denies the new charges and claims about the involvement of Chubais to his arrest. Chubais claimed that the new charges are very serious and that Kvachkov is insane.

The Moscow City Court approved the arrest. Kvachkov’s lawyer Andrei Pershin said via the phone that he believed that the arrest of his client was Chubais's revenge “Considering the fact that he was already in pretrial detention, we expected this to happen,” Pershin said about the court decision to keep Kvachkov in pretrial detention for two months. He said that the defense planned to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. The charges were linked to the activities of the group of Kvachkov supposters, the People’s Front for Liberation of Russia, whose members in Tolyatti were accused of training with crossbows in a plot to overthrow the government. Thus Kvachkov faced literally decades behind bars on charges of assisting terrorists and planning an armed uprising. Terrorism-related charges also mean he cannot be tried by jury that time, which implies that now there will be a greater possibility of a guilty verdict.