For speaking at a picket - a colony

On March 7, 2006, the Magistrate's Court of the Belokalitvinsky District of the Rostov Region found pensioner Alexei Rzhevsky guilty under Art. 129 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“slander”) and sentenced him to 1 year and 7 months in prison to be served in a colony-settlement. A. Rzhevsky's crime consisted in the fact that, according to the court, on September 21, 2005, he delivered a speech to the picket participants, in which he accused the head of the Belokalitvinsky district, A. Romanov, of various crimes.

The head of the legal service of the Rostov-on-Don City Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation E. Bessonov regarded the verdict as unfair, unproven and passed on the basis of assumptions, since no material evidence of A. Rzhevsky's crime was presented in court, the decision was made on the basis of witness testimony, moreover defense testimony was not taken into account.

The verdict is being appealed to the city court.

Sources

• Pensioner jailed for word spoken at picket // Official website of the Communist Party. 2006. March 29.