Prisoner in controversial terrorism case says interrogators threatened to beat a murder confession out of him

Konstantin Kartashov, the attorney defending Penza Network case prisoner Maxim Ivankin, says officials have tried to pressure his client into confessing to involvement in the death of Artyom Dorofeyev and Ekaterina Levchenko. “They started scaring him and hinting at physical violence. They said it would look like a suicide and [investigators] wouldn’t consider other explanations since he’s being held at a federal detention center as a suicide risk,” Kartashov told Novaya Gazeta.

Ivankin’s lawyer says the special agents who threatened him didn’t share their names or say what agency they represented. Ivankin says he lost consciousness after the meeting.

In February, Maxim Ivankin was sentenced to 13 years in prison on charges of involvement in a terrorist network and attempted large-scale drug trafficking. 

Alexey Poltavets, another Penza Network case suspect still at large, recently told Meduza that he and Ivankin murdered Artyom Dorofeyev and Ekaterina Levchenko. After Meduza published Poltavets’s confession, police located Levchenko’s remains. (Dorofeyev’s body had been recovered previously.)