Leonid is 39 years old. He is a Siberian, born and raised in Angarsk. In October, NTV aired the fabricated film *Anatomy of a Protest 2*, in which the events at Bolotnaya (Bolotnaya Square protests in Moscow) were described as “mass riots,” and Razvozzhayev was presented as one of those allegedly responsible for organizing them. Leonid was placed on the federal wanted list. At the time, he was in Kyiv. Four officers from the Russian security services seized him right off the street, disregarding the fact that this was Ukrainian territory, and forced him into a minibus. Razvozzhayev’s hands and feet were tied, after which he was taken to the basement of some building and held there for two days, threatened with death—both his own and that of his children, his 8-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son. Leonid broke under the pressure and signed what they wanted from him—supposedly a “confession.”
Once back in Moscow, he retracted the testimony obtained under torture. On November 7, at a hearing in the Moscow City Court, Razvozzhayev publicly confirmed that he was withdrawing his confession. That same day, the Moscow City Court upheld the decision to keep him under arrest. Later, two more criminal charges were added against him: he is now accused of preparing mass riots (Criminal Code, Article 30, Part 1; Article 212, Part 1), robbery allegedly committed in Angarsk in 1997 (Article 162, Part 2), and illegal crossing of the state border (Article 322, Part 1).
In December of last year, Razvozzhayev was transferred to Angarsk without warning, supposedly for investigative actions in the robbery case. This became known on December 20. For five days, the public simply could not locate Razvozzhayev, fearing that attempts might be made to “beat” more confessions out of him. On December 25, members of the ONK (Public Monitoring Commission) found him in Chelyabinsk Detention Center No. 1. In March, Leonid was transferred from the Irkutsk pretrial detention center to an unknown destination; on March 18, he was brought to Moscow. He is currently being held in Matrosskaya Tishina (a well-known Moscow pretrial detention center) and will remain there at least until August 6. Andrei Piontkovsky speaks about Leonid Razvozzhayev
