Russian Blogger Receives One Year of Suspended Sentence for a Comment

Today, July 7, 2008, blogger and musician Savva Terentyev received one year of suspended sentence from the City Court of Syktyvkar (Republic of Komi) for his comments to a blog article by local journalist Boris Suranov, posted on February 15, 2007.

On February 22, 2008, the Syktyvkar prosecutors officially charged Savva Terentyev of inciting to social hatred towards policemen in a commentary to an Internet diary entry. The charge was made on the basis of Article 282 of the criminal code of the Russian Federation condemning :the incitement of hatred or hostility [...] on the basis of sex, race, nationality, language, ethnicity, religion, or reference to a social group;.

Terentyev commented within a discussion about police corruption. In essence, using very harsh words, the comment expressed hate towards incorrect police officers, and towards the general dullness and lack of education of the police forces which are joined only by ;bydlo i gopota; (:cattle and hooligans;). Terentyev further expressed his wish that in the center of Syktyvkar there were a furnace, like in Auschwitz, to burn an incorrect policeman a day.

Terentyev admitted to be the author of the comment, but didn't plead guilty, saying that he had only expressed his opinion on corrupted policemen in a hyperbolic way. Besides, he apologized to the victims of the Nazi camps for the Auschwitz allegory.

Several times, teams of experts examined the Terentyev's commentary. While the first commission was absolutely favorable to the blogger, the ensuing reports of the experts convened to reevaluate the statements grew increasingly hostile. The second report found the content to be provocative and somewhat extremist in nature, but did not believe the evidence sufficed to build a criminal case.

The last report, issued on June 19, 2008, concluded, among other things, that the policemen were a social group, that Terentyev's statements were an incitement to social hatred, and that the Internet diary where they were posted was a public place (and thus Terentyev publicly incited social hatred). It is this report that serves as basis for today's decision.

The status of the police forces as a whole as a social group is however questionable and unclear; in the very text of the experts' report, the policemen are named :professional group;; the expert sources the commission used to define the concepts they employed to support the accusations against Terentyev numbered, among others, the Russian version of the nonacademic Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

The conclusion that the blog is a public place is also questionable since not more than a handful of people had read the comment before the accusations of extremism were brought into the open.

The fact that Terentyev was referring to :incorrect cops; was completely disregarded from the analysis - thus, the conclusion that Terentyev was inciting to violence against all law-enforcers is considered flawed. It is doubtful in any case that the musician's comments would be literally interpreted by the readers.

What is acknowledged, however, is the great amount of time - one and a half years - and effort the various commissions invested into analyzing Teretyev's comments, even asking for the musician's school essays, including those he had copied from the textbook. At the same time, such commissions would be very much welcome to extend their analysis to other incitements to violence, particularly to those that set a time and date.

In a last word about the trial, Terentyev described it as :interesting and merry;.

The ruling will be attacked by Terentyev and his lawyers at the Supreme Court of the Republic of Komi.