Yury Khovansky's Open Letter

This is an Open Letter to all media, bloggers and just people who care about my fate. My name is Yuri Khovansky, and I have been in pre-trial detention center for half a year on charges of justifying terrorism. Nine years ago, in 2012, I made an immoral and stupid joke when I performed a song for which I am now behind bars. During these nine years, I have repeatedly repented, apologized and made a charitable donation to the fund to help victims of terrorism. There is no moral justification for my action, but the statute of limitations for this offense has expired. The article on which I am accused (205.2 part 2) appeared only in 2016. It is very well known to me, to you and to the investigators of the Central Investigation Department, who keep me in pre-trial detention center, extending my arrest month after month.

I was ready to endure it and receive legal punishment for my song, but what happens to me cannot be called legality. Despite the fact that the whole country knows that I sang that song in 2012, the investigation refuses to accept evidence of this, because they understand that they will have to let me go, so they cannot allow this. As a result, instead of investigating the crime, the investigators changed the time of this action to 2018 with the help of dummy witnesses.

Four madmen testified that they witnessed my performance of this song, and the case was in 2018. Their testimony is ridiculous, but when I read them, I did not want to laugh — I wanted to cry. The court accepted this testimony — the judge was not even surprised when he read this nonsense. At the same time, all the numerous proofs of the protection that the song was performed in 2012 are being ignored. On one side of the scale there are notarized facts, on the other there are testimonies of people who do not even know what a "stream" is. All four witnesses are from St. Petersburg, which is very convenient for the St. Petersburg Central Investigation Department.

I hoped that I could argue it in court, but recently the head of the investigation group of my case came to me and, without notifying my lawyers, secretly offered me conditions:

1. I have to testify that I sang that song in 2018. 

2. I have to give up my lawyers.

3. I have to accept their lawyer.

If I fulfill these conditions, they will cease to appoint endless expert examinations, they will take the case to court, where I will receive a fine and be released. If I refuse these conditions, it will be done as if I "stubbornly deny everything" and I will get a real prison sentence. I have already believed this investigator once — he promised to change the measure of restraint to house arrest, if at the very beginning I give such evidence that they need and refuse right against self-incrimination (51 article of the Russian Constitution). I told him that I no longer believed him and that I was not going to confess what I had not done.

In response, he gave me two days to think it over and said that if I refuse it, then not only me, but also my beloved woman Masha will have problems. Previously, the detectives had already threatened me to plant drugs on her if she didn't withdraw her complaint. Two days later, the investigator sent my computers for examination, although they had already been examined, and not to the Central Internal Affairs Department, but to the Federal Security Service. My lawyers still cannot get a copy of the order on the appointment of this examination, they just don't want to give it to my lawyers. The investigator also forbade the lawyers to be present with me during the investigative action — this is an unheard-of violation of my constitutional rights: people in the Kresty prison do not believe that such a thing is possible. But now I know that with such people in the investigative committee everything is possible.

I'm scared and I don't know what to do. I was afraid before while I was in a pre-trial detention center, but I have never been afraid for my loved ones on the other side of the fence. I did not think that in Russia in 2021 an investigator could openly threaten the family of the accused and demand to confess to what he did not commit. This is not the 37th year of the USSR, I thought. Now I don't know what to think anymore.

I’m asking you, no, I’m begging you — help me. Don't let them harm my family. Don't let them put something on my computer or jail me according to the testimony of false witnesses! The law should work even for those you don't like. I was not the best person when I was free, but is this a reason to justify the methods of the NKVD that are applied to me? Think of the fact that I have 4.5 million subscribers, and the Investigative Committee only needed 4 false witnesses to break my life. How many false witnesses will they need to break yours?

Every third person in my prison is imprisoned exclusively on the "testimony" of such "witnesses". It could be your husband, your brother, your son. Now it is not just my fate that is being determined, now the boundaries of permissiveness, which the investigating authorities allow themselves, are being determined. Because anyone can go to the web archive and make sure I sang that song in 2012. After all, it should not be so that the judges look at black and say that it is white. People should not be allowed to be judged not according to the law, but because of public resonance. These werewolves in uniform shouldn't be allowed to threaten our loved ones. Please help me! Without your help, they'll just kill me.

RU version: https://telegra.ph/Otkrytoe-pismo-YUriya-Hovanskogo-11-29