Linar: Please tell us, when did you start noticing changes in Ilnaz’s behavior?
Nailya: Everything started after the New Year, from 2020 to 2021. We were celebrating the New Year together and he was completely normal at that time. He started behaving aggressively in January. He and his brother were living together in the same room. He started to kick Insaf out, didn’t let him sleep, they frequently got into fights. Sooner he started referring to us only by our names.
Linar: Do you talk to each other in Russian in your family?
Nailya: No, only in Tatar.
Ilnaz didn’t let me sleep too. I worked at the bank, at the cash-collection center. During the night I was counting the money which was brought by the collection service, so I usually took a nap during the day. Ilnaz started walking around slamming the doors and not letting me sleep. Or he would come up to our room at 12 a.m., simply staring somewhere and not answering. There was a clock across our room, and I thought he was staring at it. I was asking him: “Son, why are you here?” He never answered.
Linar: Was Ilnaz already calling himself a God by that time?
Nailya: Yes. I never took that seriously.
Linar: He never behaved like that before the New Year? What kind of person he was?
Nailya: He was always obedient, neat. He would never sit at the table before cleaning it. Journalists are saying that he is suicidal and trying to kill himself. I can’t believe that, he was always so afraid of death! He has a lot of moles and he was always afraid of getting cancer from sunbathing. He never kept his mobile phone at his room and also forced his brother to bring his mobile phone to the kitchen to be safe from radiation. He never planned to get a driver’s license because he was afraid to get into cars crash and die.
Rinat: He always helped his grandfather in the village, never refused to help. We frequently visited the village, during the weekends, holidays, summer, he and his brother spent much time there.
Nailya: He always helped me with cleaning up the house. And suddenly he completely changed. In the past after having the meal he always said “Thank you, it was very tasty”. And now he would say “Your food tastes like shit!” He even started singing a “prison” song at some point. I have no idea where he would learn about such songs, he never listened to them.
Rinat: He also started smoking. We noticed that after the New Year. At first he started smoking electronic cigarettes, then – the ordinary ones. “I don’t care” became his favorite saying, whenever you ask him about something he “doesn’t care” about that. The last time his mother cut his hair because he wanted to fully shave his hair, like if he was going to join the army. He said he didn’t care what his peers would say about him. I also offered to buy him a car, but he said he didn’t need anything.
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Linar: Why do you think he changed so dramatically?
Nailya: I don’t know myself what happened to him. I already scolded him several times before, I was crying and shouting: “What happened with you, why do you have such eyes?!”
Rinat: I remember one thing; he said that some guy at the college threatened him with a knife. There were only boys in his group and no girls. Ilnaz said that everyone simply ran away and he was the only one who wasn’t afraid to stand up against this guy. He said he started feeling himself “stronger” after what happened.
Linar: Have you noticed any new company around him?
Rinat: No. This was his last year at the college, but he told us about wanting to leave in September. I said to him: “Son, we are paying 40 thousand rubles per year for your education, finish it and finally get your diploma”. He only replied with “I’ll return you all money”.
Linar: Why did he decide to drop the college?
Rinat: He never explained why. But he didn’t enjoy attending it. We are the members of the WhatsApp chat where parents are being informed about the pupils, if they are being expelled, if they are not paying, etc. Nobody wrote anything about Ilnaz. And then we suddenly found out that he was expelled. Before that day the curator of the group called us and asked if Ilnaz was ill. We didn’t even know that Ilnaz was skipping classes. I wish they called us and said that Ilnaz was skipping classes; this was the last year of his studies. All this time we were thinking he was actually studying, since he was having a practice. They also told us Ilnaz was skipping classes since September, they should’ve warned us about that as well so we wouldn’t let him simply wasting time at home.
Linar: Was he talking about problems with his peers?
Rinat: No, he only told us about this incident with a knife. But he said he only became more excited after that, started feeling himself “cool”.
Linar: Was he bullied at school?
Rinat: When Ilnaz was studying at school he never complained about bullying. But after the New Year he confessed to us about the bullying, saying he wasn’t treated well at school and even cried because of that.
Linar: Did he have a girlfriend?
Rinat: No.
Insaf: No, he didn’t have a girlfriend. Neither in Kazan nor in the village.
Linar: Did he have a special opinion about his birth date, the 11th of September, 2001, the same day when the horrible tragedy happened in the USA?
Insaf: No.
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Linar: Is it true that Ilnaz forced you to move to another apartment?
Nailya: Before that we bought a flat and were repairing it. After the New Year Ilnaz started hurrying us, asking us to move out. He told us: “If you don’t leave I’ll rent the flat on my own”. Eventually we moved out, Insaf moved out the first, and then we did. Everyone keeps saying that we left Ilnaz alone, but that’s not true – we visited him at least 2-3 times a week. I was cooking food for him and cleaning up the flat. And he behaved completely normally, his eyes became the same. I thought he behaved aggressively only to kick us out of the flat – he even swore at us.
Linar: When did you finally move to the new apartment?
Insaf: At the end of February. He forced us to do that, he didn’t let Nailya sleep. We regularly visited him 3 times a week. We thought he was so angry at us because of the flat, since Insaf was actually going to inherit it. We became happy thinking that flat was the only reason he behaved like that. We didn’t mind. But turned out it wasn’t the reason for his inadequate behavior.
Linar: What was the last time when you visited him?
Nailya: On the 3rd of May. We cooked food for him and brought potatoes from the village. After that he forbade us visiting him, saying he would cook everything on his own.
Linar: And you never visited him again?
Nailya: On the 10th of May Ilnaz’s father called him, saying that I was planning to visit him the next day.
Rinat: And he replied: “Tell mom not to hurry”. He said she should arrive at the apartment building at half past eleven, not earlier. He already had a plan.
Linar: What did actually happen on the 11th of May?
Nailya: I was cooking food for Ilnaz, and then Insaf suddenly told me: “There’s an ongoing school shooting”. I almost immediately remembered that we had a gun too. I packed the food and headed to Ilnaz’s flat together with Insaf by taxi. By the time we arrived the police were already there.
Linar: At which time did it happen?
Nailya: I think it wasn’t 10 o’clock yet. I opened the door using my own key. It was very smoky but I didn’t see the open fire. Then the police led us to their car.
Linar: Did the police tell you what actually happened?
Nailya: They didn’t say us. Insaf had a mobile phone; he looked up the information on the Internet and told me. Then they took away our mobile phones. We were in one car, and then in another one, visited many places, and then the apartment was searched. By the time we arrived to the Investigative Committee it was very late at night.
Rinat: The next day we bought new clothes for Ilnaz – slippers, sports sweater. He was in the same clothes for half and year, even returned from Saint-Petersburg to Kazan in the same outfit. I can’t imagine how he didn’t get cold. He only recently changed it to new clothes we brought him.
All my relatives, acquaintances, colleagues were questioned about me. At least three relatives who live in the village were questioned about us; they were asked what kind of family we were.
Nailya: They asked for a reference for my sister from her work.
Rinat: I thought I myself would go to jail. Each time I got to the investigative committee not on my own car. They even forced us to take a polygraph test.
Linar: Which questions did they ask you?
Rinat: For example, if we knew that Ilnaz was planning to attack the school.
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Linar: What were your thoughts about Ilnaz’s interest in hunting?
Nailya: We found out about that only when he bought a gun safe, by that time we were already living in the different flat. He told us that he was going to get a gun safe and it would soon arrive to his flat. I believed ‘till the end that he was never going to actually get a gun. He got a gun in April and showed it to me. He said he was planning to hunt for wild boar with his dad in June.
Rinat: I myself checked this out; it’s true that people usually go hunting for wild boar in June. He had a gun license. He said he brought the gun from Yoshkar-Ola on a bus.
Linar: Did you ask him where he got money on a gun and a gun safe?
Rinat: We never gave him any money. He told us he earned money on his own in a computer game.
Insaf: There’s a computer game, CS:GO. It’s possible to buy stickers and gun skins in the game, to sell and re-sell them. That’s what he was doing.
Linar: Do you think it’s actually true?
Insaf: It is. He showed us the money he earned. He had about 30-40 thousand rubles. But he didn’t earn such amount of money at once; he was doing that over the period of time, for example, 6 months.
Linar: When did he start earning money this way?
Insaf: I’m not really sure. Not so long ago, maybe a year ago.
Linar: When did he earn 30-40 thousand rubles?
Insaf: He already had them before the New Year.
Linar: Have you ever noticed any strange objects in his flat, for example, what did he use to make bombs?
Insaf: He said he had some sort of acid to clean up the gun.
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Linar: Have you seen Ilnaz after the 11th of May?
Rinat: I’ve only seen him recently for the first time over the last 7 months. We weren’t allowed to say too much, we were allowed to discuss only everyday topics. And only in Russian
Linar: Were letters from him also in Russian?
Rinat: The first letter from him when he was still in Kazan was in Tatar language. Then we got 2 letters from Moscow and one from Saint-Petersburg, they all were in Russian. In the last letter Ilnaz said he urgently needed a lawyer. He wrote that after undergoing another psychiatric examination which found him competent to stand the trial. Then he was transferred to Kazan and we were informed that he refused to seek lawyer’s help.
During our meeting he asked me: “Father, why didn’t you send me to a psychiatric hospital? I wouldn’t end up like this if you did”. I replied: “Son, how could I send you to a psychiatric hospital with my own hands?” He’s a very sick person now. One of his hands is constantly shaking now. I asked: “What’s going on?” He replied to me: “Everything is fine”, yet he was hiding his hand from me. Ilnaz told us that his lawyer asked if the 3rd psychiatric examination was needed. I told him to make a request, because he already had two psychiatric examinations with different results.
Linar: Did you ask your son what actually happened on the 11th of May?
Rinat: He said he didn’t remember that day. It’s all like a blur for him now. I can’t ask much. I was openly told I would be removed from a courtroom if I ask too much.
Linar: What does Ilnaz talk about in his letters?
Rinat: He’s asking what’s going on. He is worried about how other people treat us. He asks to bring him books, food.
Linar: Did you meet with the relatives of the victims?
Rinat: I met with parents of one of the kids who was injured during the shooting. They support us. They made tea for us and said anybody could be in our shoes.
We don’t believe that Ilnaz came up with this idea on his own and that he did everything alone. But he was a part of this and we are asking for forgiveness from all of the relatives and parents of the injured and the victims who died on that day.
Linar Farkhutdinov
Subject: Interview with the family of Ilnaz Galyaviev 
Fri Jan 19, 2024 11:42 am