March 2011. Unlawful Extremism: Monthly Review

In March 2011, the previous trends in the field of unlawful application of anti-extremist legislation continued. At least two unlawful verdicts were handed down in criminal cases, one in an administrative case, and two materials were recognized as extremist as a result of incorrect judicial decisions.

Criminal prosecution

In Kemerovo, a Justice of the Peace of Court District No. 1 of the Rudnichny District found two local residents guilty of public calls for extremist activity (Part 1 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and sentenced them to 8 months in prison in a colony-settlement for putting up leaflets under the heading "Your The car doesn't belong to you." According to the prosecutor's office, the leaflets formed an "irreconcilable negative attitude" towards the state, officials, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB as social groups.

On March 14, a high-profile trial in the case of social activist Andrei Kutuzov ended in Tyumen: he was sentenced to 2 years of suspended liberty with a three-year probationary period for distributing leaflets calling for violent actions against police officers (part 1 of article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - public calls for extremist activity). The defense presented very convincing evidence of falsification of evidence, which was ignored by the court.

In addition, two sentences were overturned.

The collegium of the Supreme Court of Buryatia, due to procedural violations, overturned the sentence to activists Nadezhda Nizovkina and Tatyana Stetsura, which had been handed down earlier by the Sovetsky District Court of Ulan-Ude, and sent the case for a new trial. The activists were accused of inciting social hatred towards law enforcement officers and the military (Part 1 of Article 282 - inciting social hatred - of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and were sentenced to a fine.

The Babushkinsky District Court of Moscow overturned the verdict against the Other Russia activist Nikolai Avdyushenkov, issued earlier by the Magistrate's Court of District No. 323 of Moscow, after the expiration of the statute of limitations (Avdyushenkov was found guilty of participating in the activities of an extremist organization - part 2 of article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - for posting leaflets National Bolsheviks.)

We are aware of the initiation of three unlawful cases under criminal articles in March - in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Kaliningrad, we would like to pay special attention to the last two.

The case in Nizhny Novgorod attracts attention with its scope: 12 people were detained on charges of participation in the religious organization "Nurcular", banned for extremism, the ban of which we do not consider lawful. Moreover, in the case under Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (organization of the activities of an extremist organization), searches were carried out.

In Kaliningrad, a case was initiated under part 1 of article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (incitement of hatred and humiliation on the basis of attitude to religion using the media) against Boris Obraztsov, publisher and founder of the Far Far Away newspaper. The reason was Obraztsov's comment to an article about the initiatives of religious figures, in particular Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, regarding the appearance of Russian women. In our opinion, there was no reason to initiate a case here, since the comment, although insulting (“Religion is a combination of suckers who are bred and scum, who are at the head of any religious organization”), does not have signs of inciting hatred. Humiliation of dignity, which is also part of Article 282, can probably be seen here, but it clearly does not have a public danger - this is an obligatory sign of any criminal offense.

Administrative persecution

In March 2011, one administrative case was unlawfully initiated and one sentence was passed on an administrative offense.

In Perm, a local resident Roman Khoseev was charged under Art. 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (production and distribution of extremist materials) for leaving a comment on the forum several years ago with a quote and a reference to Hitler. In our opinion, quoting should not be regarded as dissemination of materials, otherwise discussion on many historical and more topical political topics is impossible. A reference to Hitler's book cannot be considered a distribution (we do not consider it a distribution of a book, for example, an indication that this book is in the Historical Library).

In Tver, the Central District Court upheld the earlier sentence to a local resident under Art. 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (distribution of extremist materials) for distributing prohibited materials of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Recognition of materials as extremist

In March, it became known that in January 2011, the Miyakinsky District Court of Bashkiria satisfied another lawsuit filed by District Prosecutor Amir Akhmetov and recognized as extremist another work already considered extremist on the basis of the Federal Law "On countering extremist activity." This time, Joseph Goebbels' book "The Diaries of 1945. Last Records" was chosen as the target of their crusade. This became known on March 16, 2011 from the next update of the Federal List of Extremist Materials, which at the end of March already contains more than 800 items.

Two more lawsuits were filed in March, but have not yet been considered by the courts. In Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the prosecutor's office wants to ban a number of films about the Third Reich, at least some of which are chronicles and historical films that are not Nazi propaganda. In Moscow, they want to ban an entire online diary because of one phrase by the author, in which one can only hardly see signs of extremism (the absurdity is also supplemented by the fact that by now the diary has been completely deleted).

In addition, in March, we became aware that at the end of February 2011, the founder of the lib.ru network library, Maxim Moshkov, announced that he was deleting the Samizdat website from the www.zhurnal.lib.ru domain, since he was unable to resolve the problem of banning the entire site for extremism in 2009 due to the materials of a certain Viktor Dunaev: extremism was found only in his works, but the Cherepovets City Court indicated the entire domain as the address. The site had more than 56,000 author's literary sections and about 800,000 works.

Rulemaking

On March 1, the Federal Law "On the Police", adopted by the State Duma on January 28, 2011 and approved by the Federation Council on February 2, came into force. As it turned out, paragraph 12, part 1, article 13 of the Law (On Police Rights) has the potential for misuse: now the police can make mandatory submissions to managers and officials (whereas before there was no category of obligation in the law). Previously, most providers preferred not to close access to sites hosting prohibited materials without a court order, but now they will be required to do so at the first order of the police, even if extremism is not confirmed by a court decision.