Unlawful anti-extremism in January 2012

Criminal prosecution In January 2012, not a single verdict was handed down in criminal cases known to us, which we regard as unlawful.

In the middle of the month, the prosecutor's office announced the initiation of a case under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (inciting hatred) on the fact of posting on the Internet the article "Balkaria for the Balkars ... and Moscow for them, dear ones." From our point of view, despite the fact that the article contains signs of hate speech against the Balkars, it does not contain inflammatory appeals and does not deserve a criminal case.

Unexpectedly, proceedings intensified in a number of cases initiated under Part 2 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (participation in the activities of an extremist organization) for membership in the banned (from our point of view, illegal) NBP. In Murmansk, the case of the Other Russia activist Inna Marinina, initiated back in 2010, was brought to court. The case under the same article, initiated back in 2008 in Moscow against 13 National Bolsheviks, participants in the action to seize the reception of the Foreign Ministry, also developed. Only four of them were then convicted on charges of participation in the NBP. In January, it became known about the resumption of proceedings in this case against two activists, Tatyana Kharlamova and Olga Komarova.

Meanwhile, the persecution of activist Darya Isaeva, convicted in 2009 for participating in the activities of the NBP under Part 2 of Art. 282.2, became the object of consideration by the European Court of Human Rights. It should be noted that this is the first Russian case under an anti-extremist article considered by the ECtHR. The court posed a number of questions to the Russian Federation, some of which reflect not so much the specifics of this case as general legal problems arising in connection with Article 282.2:
- "What level of involvement in the activities of a banned organization is required to be considered "participation" (in this organization) within the meaning of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code?
- Is this article sufficiently clear, was the punishment proportional to the aim pursued by the law and what, in fact, was this aim?

In January, Asylzhan Kelmukhambetov was released from prison, sentenced in June 2011 under Part 1 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (organization of the activities of an extremist organization) to one and a half years in prison. Kelmukhambetov was accused of creating in Orenburg a cell of the banned organization "Nurdzhular" (the ban of which we consider completely unlawful). The defense succeeded in replacing his imprisonment with a fine. We note such a radical mitigation of punishment under the "extremist" article as an extremely rare, if not unique, phenomenon.

Material ban

Attention is drawn to the stubbornness of the prosecutor's office of Tomsk, which at the end of January appealed the decision of the district court, which did not recognize the book "Bhagavad-Gita. As It Is" as extremist material. From our point of view, this process, built on the absurd idea of ​​banning claims about the superiority of one creed over others, should be stopped.

Rulemaking

In January, the draft federal law "On Amendments to Article 22.1 of the Federal Law "On State Registration of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs" and Articles 331 and 351.1 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation" was submitted to the State Duma and adopted in the first reading, which provides for a ban on working with minors to those who have committed crimes against the foundations of the constitutional order, as provided for in Chapter 29 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation; Now this ban already applies to most of the articles of the Criminal Code. Our concern about this bill stems from the fact that a sufficient number of wrongful sentences are passed under the articles of this chapter. This means that victims of the misuse of anti-extremist legislation may face even greater disenfranchisement.

police brutality

At the end of January in Ufa, under the pretext of testing for extremism, the police seized the entire circulation of leaflets of the opposition movement "Voice of Ufa". The circulation included four types of leaflets with a call to come to the peaceful procession on February 4, which will be held under the slogan "Vova, you're fired." We consider this practice unlawful, since several copies of printed materials are quite enough for an examination.

In the second half of the month, Bolshoi Gorod reported that employees of the "E" center and employees of other departments, on behalf of the center, interviewed some readers of the "Big City" and collected information about them. The interest of the "E" center is explained by the fact that these readers, at the initiative of the publication, sent statements to various departments of the prosecutor's office demanding to check the legality of sentences in high-profile cases, including the case of Taisiya Osipova. We regard the actions of the police as unreasonable and unlawful. In this case, the "E" center clearly had no reason to believe that the authors of the requests themselves were involved in some kind of illegal activity.

At the beginning of the month, the FSB handed over to the prosecutor's office materials that, before the New Year, employees of the "E" center, under the pretext of checking operational information about the activities of an "illegal extremist cell," extorted money from the Muslim community at the Lefortovo market in Moscow.