Court told film made to discredit witness
Discovery of headless corpses backed up story
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Saturday March 4, 2006
The Guardian
When Roman Bespalov told police a local thug had savagely beaten him, he unleashed a chain of surreal events that allegedly led him to be forced into beheading a complete stranger in a forest glade.
On Wednesday a court in the Russian town of Samara, about 600 miles south-east of Moscow, began the trial of Vladimir Kalyadentsev for murdering two migrant workers from Uzbekistan known only by their surnames, Rakhmanaliev and Iskanderov. Mr Bespalov is the prosecution's key witness against Mr Kalyadentsev, and his accomplice in the alleged crime, the callousness of which has shocked Russia.
A farming student, Mr Bespalov got into a fight with several local men in a local village nightclub in September 2004. He was taken to hospital with severe damage to his spleen, and subsequently told the police he thought a local man, Vladislav Chebayev, was among his attackers.
Prosecutors allege that days before Mr Chebayev was due to go on trial, on May 3 last year, Mr Bespalov was abducted by a gang of men who thrust him into a car, binding his hands and covering his eyes with a woolly hat.
When the hat was removed, Mr Bespalov told the court this week, he was in a forest glade surrounded by masked men in camouflage.
He told the court, according to media reports: "Another two men, their heads bound up by rags, lay down with their heads resting on a log, so I was unable to see their faces."
He said Mr Kalyadentsev, who is Mr Chebayev's nephew, told him to watch what he was doing closely and that he would be killed if he closed his eyes. "Kalyadentsev took the axe and with three blows severed the head of one of the [Uzbek] victims," Mr Bespalov said.
He said Mr Kalyadentsev held a knife to his throat, threatening him with the same fate if he did not cut off the other Uzbek's head. "He was filming it all, and said I had to smile into the camera. I did what he asked."
Mr Bespalov said the accused then told him to withdraw his testimony against Mr Chebayev or the tape would appear on local television and his relatives would be killed. The tape was also designed to discredit him as a future witness, police believe. Mr Bespalov was then taken to a bus stop and when he got home contacted the police. The two headless corpses were found 16 days later, adding weight to the outlandish tale Mr Bespalov had told the police.
The tape of the killing soon surfaced, given by an unidentified man to local TV station Orion. Oksana Tatarnikova, who works on the Orion newsdesk, said that when she first saw the tape she thought the brutal scenes were elaborate special effects from a gory TV series.
"I thought the victims were actors who would stand up and walk off," she said by telephone, adding that when she realised it was footage of a real double beheading she rushed to the toilet to vomit. "As we knew from the news about the two bodies found in the woods, the editor immediately told the police."
Orion played the tape again on Wednesday night, advising viewers in advance to keep children away from the screen. It shows Mr Bespalov smiling ghoulishly before and after he raises the axe and cuts off the man's head.
While part of the state's case involves its key witness admitting he is a killer, a source close to the prosecutor's office said Mr Bespalov was receiving state protection. He said that under Russian law Mr Bespalov was not criminally liable because he carried out the killing only because of an immediate threat to his life.
The source said: "I've seen a lot of murders in my time, but this is something especially cynical and a rare case of impertinence and daring."
The crime has also highlighted the fate of illegal labourers, part of an estimated 12 million-strong army of illegal immigrants who come from across the former Soviet Union to do Russia's menial, poorly paid jobs. Little is known about the two victims, except that they did not have legal residency in Russia.
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