Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

Witnesses Rogov, Baranova, Peskov, Artamonova, Purishkevich, Shubina, and Kramnik testified that they saw the explosion of the house at about 4 o’clock in the morning. They do not know any details associated with that incident.

However, the same witnesses, except the deceased Peskov, testified at trial that they did not see the explosion but only saw the fire. Moreover, there was no damage on the fence or the house associated with burst fire from automatic weapons.

Scene inspection reports mentioned a burnt two-story wooden house and outbuildings, as well as burnt bodies of Barinova and Svetlova.

According to forensic medical reports, Svetlova and Barinova may have died at about 4 a. m. of exposure to excessive heat causing burn shock and further charring of the bodies.

Another forensic medical test demonstrated that Sukhova had sustained bodily injury qualified as moderate because the impairment lasted more than 21 days. She suffered two burn wounds on her right and left foot, caused by high temperatures.

According to the fire cause assessment report, the point of fire outbreak was in the living room on the ground floor. The fire spread within several minutes. There was an increased gas exchange with the environment; specifically, the flames spread towards the windows, doors, and ceiling joists, entering the kitchen area through the doorway. As a result, the burning mostly spread towards the windows and further to the beams and the roof of the house, as well as to the ceiling joists and the upper floor. Technically, traces of highly flammable liquids can be revealed by an examination of the building structures. However, the high pace of spreading demonstrates that there were most likely highly inflammable or combustible substances (probably gasoline) present in significant quantity. The fire was caused by placing a powerful ignition source into the living room on the ground floor of the house; most likely, jars of gasoline were thrown through the windows, the spilled liquid was subsequently ignited with burning torches, and a grenade launcher was shot at the house.

Meanwhile, the report section examining the cause of fire specifies that the fireplace bricks were melted on the surface, which indicates that they were exposed to a heat source unrelated to the fire spread in the wooden house.

That heat source could have been formed only by an explosion of a shaped charge grenade. Other explosion factors are instant pressure increase and partial demolition of the building structures which contributed to the fire spread.

It is indicated in the section examining the point of fire outbreak that there were traces of melting present on the bricks of the fireplace in the living room.

However, there were found no floor burnthroughs, no areas of local destruction, and no local damage to the walls.

As follows from the fire cause assessment report, no traces of highly inflammable or combustible liquids were found. The same is established by the scene examination reports, which claim no such characteristic traces.

Moreover, the case file does not contain any data on peculiar traces that would attest to a shaped charge grenade explosion inside the house. The scene of the incident was inspected multiple times, and according to the reports of those investigative activities, such traces were not found.

Under those circumstances, the conclusion about the cause of the fire appears merely theoretical, insufficiently substantiated.

Given no traces of grenade explosion or highly flammable/combustible liquids, the fire cause assessment report should be deemed conflicting and therefore dubious. Such conclusions do not rule out a different cause of the fire. As established at trial from the testimony of victim Sukhova and the neighbors, there were many operaional household appliances in the house, including three heaters, gas cylinders for the oven, and highly flammable interior paneling. The expert examination did not account for that or reflect that in the assessment report.

Moreover, the point of outbreak, determined by the fire cause assessment expert, did not correspond to the circumstances of the arson described by Knyazev and Bednyakov and attributed to the defendants.

However, the judicial board found it impossible to personally search for, discover, or procedurally record any traces of highly flammable or combustible liquids and/or grenade explosion in the buiding structures so as to examine them at trial.

Thus, it should be admitted that the investigation could not establish the cause of the fire.

This conclusion of the court is objectively confirmed by another fire cause assessment report. According to that document, the hole in the piece of wood seized from the house did not result from a shaped charge jet. It was formed before the fire and could have served for structure fastening, cable installation, or laying pipes.

Still another fire cause assessment report dealt with the burnt car. It specified that the cause of fire was an ignition source placed inside by some person. The point of fire outbreak was in the car interior closer to the rear. The ignition source may have been either low-calorie (like a smoldering tobacco product) or open fire. The fire could have been spreading across the car for 5 to 10 minutes before the car was detected. The car might have moved from the burnt house to the place of discovery while the fire was spreading inside the car. The report also stated that the car interior possibly caught fire being exposed to the jet of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, which could have been inside or outside the car.

Despite that expert assessment being among the case materials, the preliminary investigation presented to the court a story in which the car was destroyed by Bednyakov, who poured gasoline on it and set it on fire. According to the expert assessment, this was not true, because the car burned down due to grenade launcher flames or a smoldering cigarette stub, not because it was doused with gasoline. That fact is objectively confirmed by the above burnt car inspection report citing