Lynching of a judge

The mysterious group “Block-Fact” took responsibility for the attack on the judge of the magistrate court district No. 203, Alexey Kuznetsov.

According to the police, an unknown person beat Alexey Kuznetsov on April 8 at about 7 p.m. in the courtyard of the 9/11 building on Krasny Tekstilshchik Street. A criminal case was opened on the fact of beatings committed out of hooligan motives: paragraph “a”, part 2 of Art. 116 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. By the way, the next paragraph “b” provides for hooliganism committed based on political hatred or hostility towards any social group. For what reasons—simply hooliganism or political—the judge was beaten, he himself could have guessed, having told what the attackers told him. However, his conversation with the correspondent turned out to be too short.

“I won’t comment on anything. For any questions, please contact the Judicial Department,” Kuznetsov snapped.

This department also could not say anything, explaining that Kuznetsov did not contact them and did not report anything.

Judge Kuznetsov is known for the fact that he often handled cases of oppositionists for participation in actions, in particular “Strategy-31”. Immediately there was an assumption that he paid for the harsh decisions on punishments that he made in relation to the detainees. He sent many away “for a day” when he could only fine them.

“I was contacted by a person unknown to me who said that the Blok-Fakt group was taking responsibility for the incident with Judge Kuznetsov,” said Maxim Brusilovsky, a member of the opposition expert council. If this is indeed the case, then the organization that “punished” the judge, which was previously known only for anti-communist actions, has expanded its scope of activity.

All other opponents of the regime hastened to assure that they oppose such methods of struggle. Thus, the leader of the St. Petersburg branch of The Other Russia, Andrei Dmitriev, said that the Other Russias have nothing to do with what happened: “We are not involved in beating judges. It would be petty to take revenge for 15 days of arrest, while many of the activists went through prison. I am sure that other oppositionists have nothing to do with this either. They are all intelligent people."

A similar point of view was expressed by Andrei Pivovarov, coordinator of the “Civil Responsibility” movement, member of the Coordination Council of the Opposition: “I very much doubt that these were activists of opposition movements. Of course, we have complaints about Kuznetsov’s activities, but they must be resolved legally. We do not support any attacks. On my own behalf, I would like to wish the judge a speedy recovery. We hope the police find whoever did this."

Oppositionists offered several versions of what happened. According to one of them, Kuznetsov could have been attacked by migrants (the Federal Migration Service is located nearby) or simply hooligans; according to another, by some person who was angry, for example, because he was deprived of his right to drive a car. Still, Kuznetsov tried not only political activists.