November 03, 2021

Without accountability, Russian security agents prosecute teenagers

topic:	Political violence
located:	Russia
editor:	Andrew Getto

The FSB, a Russian state security agency, is prosecuting alleged terrorists as young as 14, most of whose wrongdoings amount to showing some level of interest in school shootings.  Although almost all cases are classified, whenever proof is leaked to the public, they are strikingly absurd.

The latest enemy of the state is Yaroslav Inozemtsev, a 15-year-old from Volgograd. The boy  experimented with making Molotov cocktails and had a picture of the Kerch school shooting perpetrator on his desktop. Yaroslav’s classmate said the boy spoke fondly of the shooter and was going to repeat what he did, which Yaroslav denies. The authorities considered this indirect evidence hard enough to send the teenager to SIZO - a detention facility in decrepit conditions, overcrowded with seasoned criminals.

Yaroslav was a follower of true crime communities, a teenage social media phenomenon. Many of the groups gather information on famous school shooters, starting with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of the Columbine shooting. It's not that Columbine admirers aren’t a real problem: over 50 people have been killed in school shootings in Russia over the past seven years. Most recently, a freshman student shot and killed six people at Perm State University after plotting the attack for two years.

It’s no wonder, then, that the FSB has taken on the problem. The service claims it has prevented over 60 attacks by teenagers over the past two years. But the problem lies in transparency: all FSB-related information is classified, and in the past, the agency hasn’t been renowned for its just and reasonable decisions. 

For example, last year, nine Krasnoyarsk school children who subscribed to Columbine-related groups were sent to a mental asylum. We know one of their stories: FSB officers stormed 14-year-old Alyona's apartment at five in the morning, turned her place upside down, bullied her parents into signing a consent form and took Alyona with them.

In another, more famous case, three boys aged 14 to 16 were accused of starting a terrorist group; however, their terrorism amounted to nothing more than talking about blowing up a copy of the FSB headquarters on Minecraft, a popular video game.

Another high school student entered an Islamist chat on Telegram and told his friends he received an assignment from a terrorist named Ali Express - the name of an online resale website. The FSB did not appreciate the joke, and it cost him five-and-a-half years in prison.

In any country, special services have the right to classify information. This social contract comes with a cost, however: the secretive operations are supposed to be carried out by professionals, aiming to eliminate real threats. Judging from the slivers of information about the FSB’s war on teenagers, this is not the case. Greater accountability and transparency are therefore required to ensure proper enforcement. This is especially the case when the subjects are teenagers, who may require mental health guidance - not handcuffs.

Photo by Emiliano Bar

Call to Action

Remove Russia from UN Human Rights Council

Support now