Translated material
Commentary by "OWL" on the case of Andrei Novikov
The texts, the distribution of which is incriminated to A. Novikov, are fully included in the Resolution of the Prosecutor's Office of the Yaroslavl Region of March 9, 2007 on sending the case to court ("for the application of a compulsory measure of a medical nature").
We compared these texts with the list of A. Novikov's publications on the Chechenpress website (the publications themselves are mostly unavailable, but their list is still given on one of the Chechenpress pages). It turned out that of the articles incriminated to Novikov, only one appears there - "Will the Kremlin be seized?"
The same article, as well as the article "How to kill OMON", were also available on A. Novikov's personal website, although it was very difficult to find them there. (The site www.anovikov.narod.ru was removed, probably last weekend.)
The rest of the articles cited in the Decree do not appear to be publicly available anywhere.
Even a cursory reading of the two articles mentioned above shows that they do not contain any appeals. The first discusses potential terrorist threats in a way that is often read in the media (especially after major terrorist attacks). The second contains a set of assumptions about how some terrorists could attack the riot police, etc. structures; The article is structured in the form of a "story within a story", and the descriptions of the attacks given there are not perceived as an appeal.
In other texts reproduced in the Decree, one can see calls for violent action, but these texts, apparently, were never published (they were removed either from e-mails or from Novikov’s home computer), so one cannot speak of “public calls "as it is assumed by Article 280 of the Criminal Code.
We admit that we are not aware of any other publications by Novikov, which are incriminated to him by the prosecutor's office of the Yaroslavl region and actually contain calls for extremist activity, but so far we are inclined to believe that the charge under Article 280 against Novikov is unfounded.