Konstantin Dushenov convicted

The Kirovsky District Court of St. Petersburg sentenced the editor-in-chief of the fundamentalist and anti-Semitic newspaper Rus Pravoslavnaya, Konstantin Dushenov, who was accused of inciting hostility using the media, to three years in prison, Interfax reports.

According to the verdict, K. Dushenov must serve his sentence in a penal colony. Two other defendants in this case - Alexander Malyshev and Petr Meleshko - received suspended sentences of 1.5 and 1 year, respectively.

According to the investigation, from January 2005 to mid-March 2007, K. Dushenov “created an organized group to distribute an extremist film (“Russia with a knife in the back: Jewish fascism and the genocide of the Russian people”), and also published extremist articles.”

K. Dushenov involved A. Malyshev and P. Meleshko, who attended meetings of the Russian Thought club, in the activities of the organized group. He proposed distributing the film, article and other materials of an extremist nature by mail based on requests received by mail and the Internet.

The defendants were charged under Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (incitement of hatred and enmity, as well as humiliation of the dignity of a person and a group of persons on the basis of nationality, origin, attitude to religion, committed publicly and using the media, organized by a group).