Вил Мирзаянов - State Secrets - An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program

Aleksander told me about his “case.” It turned out that he was involved in a sensational episode involving the theft of three million dollars from Sheremetyevo Airport. The government of Russia had borrowed this money from some American bank. After the money was brought to Russia, the money bags containing dollars were dumped on the airfield, where they lay for almost two days before airport workers got interested in the contents of the bags.

Aleksander played a part in the handling of these dollars. According to his story, he bought the dollars for Soviet money at a discount, from some people who had successfully “domesticated the money bags” for themselves. He hid some of the dollars at different dachas and decided to take some of them abroad. Everything finished with that. He was caught on the Western border, with his dollars stuffed in gasoline cans. He said he handed over all the hidden dollars to the investigation; however, a few hundred thousand dollars were never found despite the fact that Aleksander cooperated with the investigation.

My other new comrade was called Victor D. He slept on a bed near the head of my bed. Victor was imprisoned in Lefortovo for killing his drinking buddy – a KGB lieutenant colonel – in a drunken brawl. I established reasonably good relations with my cellmates. Aleksander quickly talked me out of continuing with my hunger strike. He explained that nobody would know about it, but within five days I would be force fed, which is a cruel and humiliating procedure.

How could I argue with that? Prisoners locked up in Lefortovo were almost completely isolated. There was no connection with the outside world, and no meetings were allowed. Food parcels could be sent in once a month, and they were thoroughly searched. It was unlikely that anyone could outwit the Lefortovo jailers and send out news about himself, or get news from the outside world.

Later when I was reading up on my case, I came across a report by one of the jailers. He reported to his bosses that he found a note from my son Iskander in the food parcel. It was written on the inner side of the soap wrapper. “Dad, stand firm, we love you,” wrote Iskander…

The toughest trial I had to face in the cell was when I had to use the toilet. It was completely out in the open, and I had to sit down before the eyes of my cellmates. Aleksander saw what I was going through and settled the problem quite easily. “Vil Sultanovich!” he said. “Stop being ashamed. This regime which treats us like beasts should be ashamed!”

He was right, but I was never able to get used to such an inhumane attitude toward people under investigation.

I am grateful to my cellmates for a few lessons in “life.” If not for them, I would probably still be in jail and my life could follow the script written for me by the KGB.

Their situation was no better than mine, but my cellmates supported me as much as they could and tried to help. Although the investigator had shown me the Criminal Code and pointed out clauses that stipulated my rights, I could hardly comprehend what I was reading there.

A few months later, during one of my numerous meetings with Shkarin, he admitted that people under investigation usually gave up about 90 percent of the information about themselves during the first three or four days. At this time they are simply deeply stressed and helpless.

During my entire stay in Lefortovo Prison I had practically no defender. From the very beginning, I realized that the defense attorneys whom the investigator offered me were not real lawyers, though I made a great effort not to tell them to their faces what I thought about them.

I told my cellmates honestly about my “case” and what I was accused of. They immediately advised me to write an appeal to the district court, asking to be released. As neither my “case” nor I were dangerous, there was no need to keep me under detention until my trial. However, it was completely up to me how to write this appeal, and I had no lawyer to help me. So I spent all my weekends (the investigator does not work on weekends or holidays) in creative work. I tried to substantiate the arguments for my release. My friends advised me to send my appeal through the prison administration, because they said I couldn’t trust the investigators when it came to any serious business.

I felt uncomfortable about this because the investigator had asked me to give to him my appeal requesting release, if I ever decided to write such a document. Yavitsky, who then advised me like a lawyer, wisely recommended that I write two copies of the appeal. I could send one copy to the People’s Court through the Lefortovo Prison Administration and give the second one to the investigator, if he wanted it so much. That is the way I did it.

In the morning we were taken through two corridors for a walk in the yard. A few security guards were sitting at a large table with TV screens, at the intersection. The promenade ground was a large jail cell, 20-30 square meters in size. This room was different from the other cells because there was sky above our heads, although it was screened off with barbed wire. A guard was pacing back and forth on a special platform above the door to the promenade ground. Sometimes the voices of other prisoners from the neighboring promenade ground reached us, but it was impossible to make out what they were saying. Their voices were muffled by the Russian folk songs, which were constantly playing on the radio.

The radio in the cell was terribly obtrusive, but it was our only connection with the outside world. It drove me crazy to have to listen every day from 9 A.M. until our 10 P.M. bedtime, to Radio Station Mayak broadcasting the sermons of Asahara Shoko in poor Russian. He was the head of the Japanese religious cult “Aum Shinrikyo”, which later gained notoriety for its unspeakable sarin gas attack on Tokyo subway commuters. [96] This 20 March 1995 attack killed a dozen, severely and critically wounded 54, mildly injured 980, and frightened thousands of other subway commuters. B.W. Brackett, Holy Terror: Armageddon in Tokyo (New York: Weatherhill, 1996); David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, The Cult at the End of the World (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1996); Sadayoshi Obu, Tetsu Yamaguchi, “Japanese Medical Team Briefing,” in Proceedings of the Seminar of Responding to the Consequences of Chemical and Biological Terrorism , Office of Emergency Preparedness (Washington, DC: US Public Health Service, Department of Health and Human Services, 11-4 July 1995): 2-12 to 2-29. He was talking such trash that I had to ask my cellmates to let me lower the volume, but my young friends were used to this voice and they even needed this nonsense. Aleksander easily imitated the fanatic preacher’s voice and recited his sermons by heart in unison with the radio.

I suppose that introduced some variety into our prison life. Food was brought to us three times a day, and I must admit the food wasn’t that bad compared with what my family could afford to put on the table at that time. I remember on the fourth day of my detainment, we were given boiled buckwheat kasha with meat and a meaty borsch soup for lunch. At that time this was a delicacy for most Russians. Alexander remarked that he was eating such a dish for the first time, and he was sure that it was prepared in my honor.

We were given the newspapers Vechernaya Moskva , Sovetskaya Rossiya , and Izvestia , and we took turns reading them. For a few days they didn’t give us Izvestia . Evidently some materials were published about me during those days. Vechernaya Moskva of October 23, 1992 published an article with the title “Detained for Disclosing a Secret that Doesn’t Exist”, which discussed a report circulated by the Ministry of Security. The newspaper wrote that employees of the MB had arrested one of the authors of Moscow News article “A Poisoned Policy” on charges of divulging state secrets. The Ministry of Security didn’t disclose the name of the person detained, but the newspaper wrote that his name was Vil Mirzayanov and he was threatened with a 2-5 year jail term. Also, according to the article, the prisoner was being kept in solitary confinement at Lefortovo. The article concluded with the remark that since according to international agreements Russia didn’t produce chemical weapons, what was there to disclose?