In fact, the whole process boiled down to the fact that the prosecution again and again showed the jurors the details of the telephone connections (first the billing itself, then the protocols for its inspection, then the examination report, then pictures and tables, etc.), and the defense was eager to demonstrate to the jury “evidence of unreliability” of these details. The latter, however, were unlucky with the judge: any attempts by lawyers to demonstrate details to the jury were immediately stopped; at the slightest objection, the jury was removed from the courtroom.
As follows from the “closed part” of the trial, the defense’s arguments boil down to the fact that the details of telephone connections – the only evidence of the involvement of the accused in the murder of Kalmanovich – were falsified. More precisely, changes were made to them after the arrest of three accused in 2019.
Indeed, some of the billing files for 2009-2010 were changed in 2019, a week after the defendants were detained, and the other part was changed already in 2021 (this is evidenced by the data available in the files themselves). Only two of the nine files remained intact.
According to defense lawyers, the main changes affected the details of the “disposable” phones allegedly used by Kalmanovich’s killers: the time and place of calls were changed so that they coincided with the chronology of Kalmanovich’s murder and with interruptions in the operation of other phones.
Also, serious changes have been made to the billing of the defendant Ali Belkhoroev’s mobile phone, and a separate file has been created for this purpose, which is saved on disk under the working title “details of Ali after the murder” (hello to the colleagues who worked on this case).
The judge was reluctant to listen to the statements and motions of the lawyers in the absence of the jury, but over several months of the trial she did not find out who and why the changes were made to the detail files.
Behind all these disputes, the main thing was completely forgotten: how is it possible that the charge in a case of such a high-profile murder was based on the details of mobile phones alone? For 13 years of investigation, neither the motive for the murder nor the masterminds have been established, neither the crime weapon, nor the killer’s car, nor any other traces of him have been found?
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
